OUR SEVEN CHURCHES 






TKBEECHER 



iifcratg at §oix$tti$. 



sg/y,. "BR .15 

Jm*§ ..;1S.$5 

<%OcJiifii<y/if : <-=/V% 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



4^3/ ' 



'BEING MANY ARE ONE BODY." 






OUR SEVEN CHURCHES. 



THOMAS K. BEECHER, 

Elmira, N. Y. 





NEW YORK: 

J. B. FORD AND COMPANY, 

39 Par'k Row. 

1870. 

1/ 



#p 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, 

BY J. B. FORD & CO., 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 



028376 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 






TO 



HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D. 

Twenty-five years ago, in your discourse of Ch}'istian 
Comprehensiveness, you gave to men the truths that vital- 
ize these Lectures. I decorate them therefore with your 
name, and would win readers for my words by claiming 
that they are kin to yours, and by gratefully professing 
myself: — 

Your son in the Gospel, — 

THOS. K. BEECHER. 



CONTENTS. 



-4- 



LECTURE I. 

Page 

Roman Catholic i 



LECTURE II. 

Presbyterian . - , .21 

LECTURE III. 
Protestant Episcopal 37 

LECTURE IV. 

Methodist Episcopal . . . . . . .57 

LECTURE V. 

Independent. — Baptist and Congregational . . 77 

LECTURE VI. 
Liberal Christian . 99 

LECTURE VII, 
Choosing one's Church .123 

LECTURE VIII. 
The Church of Christ 143 



PREFATORY. 



DO not find that the people whom I serve are 
■*- any less content with our own faith and order 
because of my repeated efforts to show them that 
other churches excel us in some particulars. A 
good man's home is the more delightful to him 
as he calls to mind that the world is full of good 
homes, and that millions are as happy as he. 

Time was when " toleration " was reckoned a 
christian grace. Established churches tolerated 
(i. e. endured) dissenters as they would any other 
remediless evil or mysterious visitation. But in 
this land, where there is no privileged class nor 
established church, he who talks of tolerating his 
fellow-citizens insults them and becomes himself 
intolerable in his conceit. We must learn to re- 
spect and love our fellow-men and our sister 
churches. 

Charity between churches is too often a mere 
sentiment, a transient thing smiling out now and 



VI PREFATORY. 

then at some union meeting or anniversary, where 
the speakers are equitably adjusted between the 
denominations, and each one is careful not to 
say anything in particular, and all go home 
delighted to find that brethren can meet and 
talk without offence ; — all thankful that the 
meeting "went off well," without a quarrel or 
any scandal ! 

Charity must strike its roots deeper than this. 
The sentiment needs a refreshment from facts. 
To respect a man increasingly we must know 
him more and more. To love a church we 
must see in it something lovable. It is impos- 
sible to love on general principles or from a 
sense of duty. What better service, then, can 
be rendered to a christian man that would love 
his brethren, than to set before him their lovable 
qualities ? This service I have endeavored to 
render to my people, and now, by this little 
book, to as many others as may read. 

The witness which I bear to the excellence 
of churches other than my own has a value in 
the fact, that, while they are not my own, they 
yet compel an admiration which I am able but 
in part to express. 



PREFATORY. Vll 

I make no pretension to exhaustive detail in 
setting forth the characteristics of these churches. 
Possibly I may not have noticed their strongest 
points, their most attractive features. I have 
walked in them as in gardens of the Lord ; 
their beauties have filled my eye, and the air is 
fragrant round about. 

All who profess and call themselves christian 
have surely more points of agreement than of 
disagreement. Every church that has main- 
tained a separate denominational existence, by 
the mere fact of living proves that there is some- 
thing in her that maintains her life. Every 
church can teach every other church something, 
and every church can learn. There are diversi- 
ties of operations, but one Spirit, — many churches, 
but one religion. 

I cannot see that there need be, and I certainly 
see that there cannot be realized among men the 
dream of church unity. No two men have the 
same horizon. Because the eye cannot reach in- 
definitely, therefore vision must be bounded some- 
where. Because no two eyes can be in the same 
place at the same moment, therefore the bounda- 
ries of vision are the same to no two persons ; 



Vlll PREFATORY. 

that is, every man has. his own horizon. Because 
a man cannot know all things, nor be acquainted 
with everybody, therefore he must be content 
with knowing some things and loving a few peo- 
ple. The things and the people that a man is 
able to take in, constitute his church. But let 
every man remember that beside his church, 
bounded as it must needs be by his horizon, 
there remain the rest of mankind and the uni- 
verse of God. Let no man think of himself 
or of his church more highly than he ought 
to think, but let him think soberly, according as 
God hath dealt to every man the measure of 

faith. 

T. K. B. 

Elmira, N. Y., August, 1870. 



I. 



ROMAN CATHOLIC. 



LECTURE I. 

ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who 

SHALL STAND? — Ps. CXXX. 3. 

IN this world good and evil grow side by side. 
The net worth of a man is always a balance 
struck between his good and his evil. None is good 
save one, that is God. As with man, so also with 
churches or societies of men. Good and evil grow 
side by side in all churches. There is good in all, but 
none all good. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, 
O Lord, what church can stand ? 

Oddly enough, however, good men have sometimes 
devoted themselves to this very work of marking 
the iniquity of other men, — proving and publishing 
the errors of other churches. Men are charitable 
toward the faults of their own church, but severely 
critical when they inspect other churches. 

No church that I know of can stand up and deny 
all the accusations that are 'heaped upon her. Since 
they cannot be denied, they are resented. Counter 



4 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

charges are hurled back. We find in literature no 
malediction that can equal in eloquence and force the 
words that christians have used in cursing chris- 
tians, — so they all called themselves, but would not 
call each other. Religious wars have been bloodiest 
of all wars, — religious hate most venomous of all 
hate. 

Some of the best people of this city suspect each 
other of evil, and fail to be good neighbors, because 
of this way we have of noting the errors of other men 
and of other churches, rather than their traits of ex- 
cellence. Each church excels all others in something, 
else it would have no excuse for living. 

I purpose, therefore, several lectures in which I shall 
take pains not to criticise, censure, or "mark ini- 
quity " ; but, contrariwise, shall declare the good, the 
excelling good, which I find in each of the several 
churches of Elmira. I will begin with the Roman 
Catholic Church, as being the largest in this city, 
and destined to become, so many think, the most in- 
fluential denomination in the United States. 

As protestants, many of you will express surprise, 
if not incredulity, in view of my undertaking. Like 
Nathanael, you will be asking, — Can there any good 
thing come out of Rome ? To which I can only make 
Philip's honest answer, — Come and see. For : — 



A GOOD NAME. 5 

i. The name Catholic is very excellent. 

The Church of Rome calls herself Catholic, and 
no man can get this name away from her. Catholic 
means universal. All christians believe in the holy 
catholic church and the communion of saints. But 
the Church of Rome has somehow gained this name 
for herself, and every boy in the city, if he hears the 
word " Catholics," thinks of these Roman Catholics. 

Names are sometimes monuments. The fact that 
the Church of Rome has this name, and that none 
of us can get it away from her, is a very strong pre- 
sumption that the name belongs to her historically 
and of right. Not in name only, but in fact also : — 

2 This Church of Rome is more nearly a uni- 
versal or catholic church than any other christian de- 
nomination. 

Of all nominal christians these Roman Catholics 
are most numerous. Of all religions the Buddhist is 
probably accepted by the largest number of human be- 
ings, but the Roman Catholic by the greatest variety. 

The Roman Catholic doctrine and ritual is the 
established religion in Italy, Sicily, Spain, Portugal, 
Sardinia, Belgium, several small German States, one 
third of Switzerland, and all the vast empires France 
and Austria. So much for; Europe, — the home of 
learning, art, philosophy, and civilization. 



6 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

This side of the water Rome claims South America 
and Mexico, and a mighty army of devotees in the 
Canadas and the United States. In Asia and Africa 
even, and on the islands of the sea, the heroic mis- 
sionaries of Rome have outrun all competition, and in 
both zeal and success surpass any other one denomi- 
nation, — and I think I may say any other three de- 
nominations. 

Go to Rome, and you shall find schools and col- 
leges there for all nations and every language upon 
earth. Her ecclesiastics, when they meet, speak more 
tongues than Jerusalem heard on Pentecost. But for 
the Church tongue, Latin, spoken nowhere else by 
the living, these ecclesiastics could not talk together. 

The great council now sitting in Rome # illustrates 
the catholicity of this great Church. I know of no 
other church or denomination that can call together a 
council of such dignity as to arrest the attention of all 
Christendom, and furnish texts for repeated articles in 
eveiy newspaper and periodical in the known world. 

Disagree as we may and must with the Church 
of Rome, let us promptly admit that if any church de- 
serve to be called catholic or universal, to the exclu- 
sion of all other churches, this Roman Church is 
the one. Consequent upon her age and catholicity, 

I note : — 

* July, 1870. 



A RICH CHURCH. 7 

3. The wealth of this Church in its most desirable 
forms — architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and 
devotional literature — is excellent. 

In this land of meeting-houses necessitated by dis- 
sent and division, we can form little conception of 
those monuments of piety into which united peoples 
brought their contributions, as they did their prayers, 
daily through a lifetime, until successive generations 
left their testimony towering up amid their graves, 
that the only enduring interest and imperishable value 
possible to man is his piety and its achievements. 

I do not forget that monarchs have commuted im- 
perial villanies by chapels and by tombs to saints. I 
do not forget that ecclesiastics have subsidized the 
world to come to build up cathedrals, whose very 
name betrays their use, — mere canopies for the cathe- 
dra or bishop's chair. 

But beside these monstrous abuses and extortions, 
there have been for centuries the steady givings of 
humble men and women to the treasury of the Church, 
— givings fragrant as the two mites of the widow; 
labors as pious as the service rendered by Mary to 
the feet of the Master. Communities undisturbed by 
doubt, — communities awed and quickened by the same 
ritual, ministered unto by the same priest, and led in 
beautiful consent from the cradle to the grave, — united 



8 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

communities, — blossom naturally into works of pious 
art. 

In such communities the artist, a-thrill with genius, 
works out his plans and pictures, and brings them to 
the village church as his offering to God. The sculp- 
tor finds in religious rapture inspiration which golden 
guineas can never give him. The poet, who is never 
a thinker but always a sympathizer, vibrating with 
the passions that fill the air, will string his lyre and 
sing his loftiest tune among peoples who are surging 
hither and thither in great tides of religious passion. 

In short, the wealth of ages, slowly accumulated, 
remains in the possession of this Roman Catholic 
Church, — ages, too, in which religion was much and 
economy nothing. And this accumulated wealth — 
architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, music, and 
pious literature — I note as a peculiar excellence of 
the Roman Catholic Church, in which regard she 
is not equalled by any denomination of christians, 
and will not, probably, ever be surpassed. 

4. The unity of Roman Catholic doctrine and ritual 
throughout the world is excellent. 

When I preach for my brethren of Other churches, 
I find cards in their pulpits telling the order of ser- 
vice and what is usually done at that church. I leave 
such a card to guide the brother who stands in my 



FIRM AND CONSISTENT. 9 

place. And when any of you go into a strange 
meeting-house you feel a little embarrassed. You do 
not know just what to do or what comes next. Not 
so with a Roman Catholic. If he go to church 
here on our Market street, and learn the calendar 
and ritual of service, he will find the same the wide 
world over. He may go into any parish church or 
proud cathedral or missionary's tent, and he will find 
the priest walking by the same rule and minding 
the same things that he learned on Market street, 
Elmira. 

5. The firmness and consistency with which the Ro- 
man Catholic Church asserts her quality and author- 
ity are excellent. 

For this very excellence she is often reproached and 
called bigoted. Such reviling is thoughtless and ill- 
advised. 

If any man say that Jesus Christ has founded a visi- 
ble church on earth, and declared her proper order, 
and endowed her with sacraments and divine author- 
ity ; and, next, that the church in which he is dwelling 
is that one true church of Christ , — then he must of 
necessity deny that other churches are true churches. 

Sir, I am sole agent of Rodgers' Sons for this city. 
They have no other age?it here. But I am none of your 
stingy sort, and so I am willing to admit that every store 



IO ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

in town sells Rodgers 1 cutlery just as good as mine, 
Nonsense ! 

He who in one breath says, I belong to the one true 
and only church of Christ upon earth, and in the next 
breath declares approval of any and all other churches 
as being as good as his own, stultifies himself. Pre- 
tensions such as the Roman Catholic Church makes 
cannot be reconciled with liberalism and general good 
fellowship. The Roman Catholic Church is con- 
sistent in this matter. She claims to be the one true 
church of God, and she will not allow any other 
claimant to speak uncontradicted. She claims that 
salvation is with her ; and consistently she declares 
the perdition of them who are outside of her. This 
consistency is excellent. It is an element of strength. 

In this same line of excellent consistency I note : — 

6. The fair, square way in which the Roman Catho- 
lic Church speaks of and treats the Bible. 

The doctrine of the Catholic Church is that the 
Bible as interpreted and applied by the Church and 
her ministers is of uttermost worth and authority. 
But that when used by the unlearned and unstable it 
becomes the text of divers and strange doctrines. 
Therefore let no man have or read the whole Bible ex- 
cept by permission of his priest or spiritual superior. 

Sincere christians will be pleased to know that the 



USE OF SCRIPTURE. II 

Catholic Church selects and prints and gives to her 
children all, or very nearly all, those Scriptures which 
have been proved precious age by age. By this I 
mean, that if you will prepare me a list of the instruc- 
tive and comfortable words of Scripture as you have 
proved them after years of reading, I will show you 
nineteen twentieths of them all, selected and classified 
and given to good Catholics in their prayer-books 
or devotional manuals. The gospels, the epistles, 
and the psalms which we find in the book of com- 
mon prayer of the protestant episcopal church are 
translated bodily from similar manuals used by pious 
Catholics. I believe it to be the custom in churches 
of every name to use the Scriptures eclectically and 
interpret them by a creed. The Roman Catholic 
Church frankly declares that they ought to be so used 
if at all, — a very excellent frankness. In this con- 
nection I note : — 

7. The Roman Catholic Church at least professes 
to accept and illustrate much Scripture that is usually 
disregarded or explained away. 

Somewhere in her vast variety of doctrine and ritual 
she finds place for nearly everything spoken of, or even 
hinted at, in Scripture. I dare not say that her illus- 
trations are all of them sound and accurate ; but I 
note that the mere intention to fulfil all Scripture is at 
least an excellent intention. 



12 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

Jesus washed the disciples' feet. A Roman bishop 
washes the feet of twelve beggars annually. 

St. James tells us of anointing the sick with oil and 
praying over them. The parish priest takes his oil 
and goes and prays by the sick. 

St. Peter tells about spirits in prison to whom Jesus 
went and preached. The Church of Rome tells us 
of purgatory and spirits still in prison that may be 
helped by the sacrifice of the mass and the prayers of 
the faithful. 

St. Mark asserts that certain signs shall follow them 
that believe. The Church of Rome claims that there 
never has been a day in which miracles have not been 
granted somewhere in her vast domain for the comfort 
of the meek and childlike. 

Jesus breathed on the apostles and said, Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost. Roman bishops suppose themselves 
to confer the Holy Ghost by the same act of breathing 
upon candidates. 

Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted, said Jesus ; 
whose ye retain, they are retained. This Roman 
Church quietly and as a matter of course forgives 
sins and pronounces excommunications. 

I might easily multiply citations of this sort. Of 
course I, a protestant, do not mean to say that the 
claims of the RoxMan Catholic Church in all these 



A GOOD EDUCATOR. 1 3 

particulars will bear investigation. But I do say that 
the Roman Catholic Church professes to give mean- 
ing and illustration to many Scriptures which are ordi- 
narily neglected or explained away. 

8. This Roman Catholic Church provides excellent 
apparatus for the use of her child ?wt in the culture of 
virtue and piety, 

Alas ! I cannot say that her children use the appara- 
tus, or that her gathered multitudes are all exemplary 
in righteousness. The Lord himself chose twelve and 
taught them, and yet one of them was Judas. The 
fault was not of Jesus but of Judas. 

^he apparatus of spiritual culture in a Roman 
Catholic Church remind me vividly of our best-ap- 
pointed schools. The attitude of the Church and of 
her ministers is a parental attitude. Mother Church 
calls, Come, my children, listen to my words. The chil- 
dren do not always come, but if they come they get 
help. To illustrate what I mean, let me read to 
you some of the questions by which a Catholic is 
advised to examine himself previous to confession. 
The questions are numerous, and based on the ten 
commandments, one by one. I quote from those 
under what we call the eighth commandment : — 

"Thou shalt not steal. > 

" Have you been guilty 7 of stealing, or cheating, or 



14 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

" any way wronging your neighbor in buying or selling, 
" or any other bargains or contracts ? 

" Have you been accessory to another's committing 
" any such injustice ? How often ? To what value ? 

"Have you dishonestly kept what belongs to an- 
" other ? 

" Have you caused any damage to your neighbor in 
" his house, cattle, or other goods ? 

" Have you contracted debts without design to 
" pay them ; or without prospect of being able to pay 
" them ? Have you delayed or refused to pay your 
" debts when you were able ? Have you by prodigal 
" expenses made yourself unable, and so wronged your 
" creditors or your family? 

" Have you been guilty of usury in the loan of 
" money ? 

" Have you put off false money ? How much ? How 
" often ? 

" Have you professed any art, or undertaken any 
" business, without sufficient skill or knowledge ? What 
" damage has your neighbor suffered from it ? 

" Have you bought or received stolen goods ? Or 
" taken of those who could not [afford to] give ? 

"Have you neglected your work or business to 
" which you were hired ? Have you broken your 
" promise in matters of consequence ? 



PIOUS CONFESSION. 1 5 

" Have you neglected or delayed to make restitution 
" when it was in your power ? " 

Fellow-citizens ! These are close questions for a man 
to ask himself. I have never heard any preaching 
half so close. And under each commandment the 
questions are equally searching. This is an ear- 
nest church that sets her children to look up their 
sins as with lighted candles, and points out every 
crack and corner where sins are wont to hide. Ex- 
amine yourselves and confess your sins ! All this 
is excellent. 

9. The sacrament of confession is of peculiar excellence 
and profit to them who piously use the same. 

That a child does well to confess his sins to a 
mother, no one doubts. That a husband will gain 
strength by confessing his sins to his wife, or at least 
so many of them as she can understand, no one will 
deny. That confession is profitable is self-evident. 
That men have very vague and shadowy sense of 
God and his presence ; that men easily call them- 
selves in a general way 7niserable offenders, and ask 
pardon of God without much shame or sense of sin, 
we all know. That our hearts are very deceitful and 
full of concealments and disguises, we all know. In 
short, we all do verily know 'that a hearty confession 
of sin made to a brother man whom we have reason to 



1 6 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

honor, trust, and love, is a very profitable act toward 
reformation. 

Opening the New Testament, we read : Confess 
your faults one to another, and pray one for another. 
In another place we read : Whose sins soever ye re- 
mit, they are remitted unto them ; and whose soever 
sins ye retain, they are retained. Thus, by Scripture 
and by consciousness, we are taught the value of con- 
fession and of declared absolution as helps toward a 
reformed and ennobled living. And I love the Cath- 
olic Church for her brave and motherly way of saying, 
— Come, come, my children, and confess yourselves. 

"Let your confession be htwible, without seeking 
" excuses for your sins, or flinging the fault on others ; 
" let it be entire as to the kind and number of your 
" sins, and such circumstances as quite change the na- 
" ture of the sin, or greatly increase its guilt. Be 
" modest in your expressions, and take care not to 
" name any third person." 

After a general and a special confession let the peni- 
tent say : — 

"For these and all other my sins which I cannot 
" at this time call to my remembrance, I am heartily 
" sorry ; I purpose amendment for the future, and most 
" humbly ask pardon of God, and penance and absolu- 
" tion of you, my ghostly father. 



ECONOMICAL WORKERS. 1 7 

" While the priest gives you absolution, bow down 
"your head and with great humility call upon God for 
" mercy ; and beg of him that he would be pleased to 
" pronounce the sentence of absolution in heaven while 
"his minister absolves you upon earth." 

There may possibly be vicious priests in the Catho- 
lic Church, — priests unworthy of trust. The per- 
dition is theirs if they betray the Lord's little ones. 
One thing is very certain, — that no man ever yet 
confessed his sins truly, and took counsel of a christian 
father or adviser, but he was at once a happier and 
a better man for it. 

10. The Roman Catholic Church maintains eccle- 
siastical, educational, and missionary enterprises with 
remarkable and excellent economy. 

Her unmarried clergy and other religious men and 
women consecrated to church work develop a pro- 
digious amount of labor at an incredibly small cost. 
To a consecrated man or woman money is no object. 
Having food and raiment they are therewith content. 
There is and can be little or no competition among 
them. Consequently there is no wasteful expendi- 
ture. 

An accomplished scholar spending his life in a pro- 
fessor's chair, earns and well earns from two to three 
thousand dollars a year. An equal man in a Roman 



1 8 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

Catholic college receives, perhaps, five hundred 
dollars ! 

A skilful teacher of feminine accomplishments — as 
music, drawing, embroidery, French — commands in 
our fashionable schools from five to fifteen hundred 
dollars. In a Roman Catholic school an equal abil- 
ity is provided at a cost of from two hundred and fifty 
to three hundred dollars. 

Vigorous faultfinders and censors of the Roman 
Catholic Church must admit thus much at least : — 
That, because of the consecration of her many thou- 
sand men and women, the Church is able to do 
a vast amount of work at comparatively small cost. 
And further, if self-denial and voluntary obedience 
and poverty are evidence of sincerity, or better, if 
they are graces acceptable with God, it must be at 
once admitted that the Roman Catholic Church 
exhibits a very goodly multitude of the lowly-minded, 
the obedient, and the self-denying. And these are 
excellent. This leads naturally to — 

1 1 . The Roman Catholic Church, albeit no respecter 
of persons, can nevertheless grade and classify its members, 
giving to each o?ie a position, work, and dignity according 
to temper and ability. 

In this city, as in all our cities, the Catholic 
Church is the church of the poor and of the hard- 



A PLACE FOR ALL. 19 

working. Demagogues may have taught Irishmen to 
despise colored men, but no Catholic priest will shut 
them from the church nor turn them from the altar. 

Plain or even ragged and soiled apparel may be 
eyed and unwelcome in many churches of thrifty, well- 
to-do Americans, but in the Catholic Church dress 
is of no account while mass is saying. 

And if any one, touched by the spirit of Christ, 
longs to work, the Catholic Church has a place for 
man, woman, and child. Travelers will tell you that 
the charities of Catholics are world wide. Where 
cholera rages and the pestilence works desolation, 
you shall find brothers and sisters of mercy nursing 
the forsaken and shriving the dying. 

When hell vomits fire and men call it war, like 
flowers by lava streams come quickly to the hot edges 
of devastation the meek and silent sisters of charity. 
Before the buzzards spot the sky spying their prey, 
these heavenly doves have found the living, comforted 
the dying, and are praying for the dead already 
buried. 

Citizens of Elmira ! If we choose to inspect this 
Catholic Church, to search out and mark her errors 
and ransack her history for discreditable passages, we 
shall succeed as well as they do when they look for 
ours. Lo, I propose a better way. Look for the 



20 ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

good that belongs to her and you shall find it in great 
measures. Become acquainted with her best com- 
municants, and you will find them christians of like 
fears and like hopes with the best in our own and in 
all churches. Possibly the time may never come in 
which they can recognize the true and the good that 
is with us and with others ; for which very reason 
others should be the happier to recognize the good 
that is with them. 

Peace be upon them and upon the whole Israel of 
God. Amen. 



II. 



PRESBYTERIAN. 



LECTURE II. 

PRESBYTERIAN. 

" Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the 
elder." — I Peter v. 5. 

THE Greek language has a word npiafivs [presbus] 
which means old, aged, and consequently re- 
spectable, venerable. The comparative degree of this 
adjective is irpco-pifrepos [presbuteros], which brings us 
very near to our familiar word presbyterian, and to the 
subject of this lecture. 

If we were accustomed to read the New Testament 
in Greek, we should find this word presbyterian or its 
equivalent many times repeated. Wherever you find 
elders in your Testaments, it is the Greek word 7rpeo-/3u- 
repos or an inflection of it. 

Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel is presby- 
ters of Israel.* Or in the parable of the prodigal son,f 
his elder son was in the field, his presbyter son was in 
the field. Or, to Timothy Paul writes, entreat the 
elder women as mothers, the presbyter women. % In 

* Acts iv. 8. t Luke xv. 25. f 1 Tim. v. 2. 



24 PRESBYTERIAN. 

Mark we read of the priests and scribes and. presbyters 
who had sent out a crowd to arrest Jesus.* And in 
Matthew we read that Jesus was accused of the chief 
priests and presbyters. | 

The New Testament is full of presbyterianism. It 
is by far the oldest and very clearly the only natural 
social order. Ye younger, submit yourselves unto 

THE ELDER. 

Any society that is guided and governed by its 
elder members is properly called presbyterian. If it 
be governed by the whole congregation in mass-meet- 
ing it is congregational. If it be governed by bishops, 
regardless of age or number, then it is episcopal. 

I note then as an excellence that belongs to the 
Presbyterian Church, that : — 

i. The Presbyterian order is eminently ancie?it y 
natural, sensible, and Scriptural. 

I have no doubt that in Adam's family the younger 
were to submit to the elder; and they did so until 
Cain killed his brother and became independent. 
We know surely that the congregation of Israel was 
organized presbyterially, and governed by a council of 
elders. This great original presbytery was organized 
by Moses at the suggestion of Jethro, his father-in- 
law. And this natural and wise control given to the 

* Mark xiv. 43. t Matt, xxvii. 12. 



A NATURAL ORDER. 25 

elders over the people continued in Israel down to the 
days of Jesus, and beyond them, affecting through the 
presbyterian synagogue, the Presbyterian Church. 

Citizens and brethren ! We have used this word 
presbyterian as a proper name so long that we have 
forgotten its meaning. We have so long reckoned an 
elder a mere officer, that we have forgotten that elder 
means older. 

But there are many passages in the New Testament 
in which this same slipping sense perplexes us, and we 
cannot say positively whether the language means an 
older man or an official man. Rebuke not an elder, 
but intreat him as a father.* Does this protect age or 
an officer ? Paul sent to Ephesus and called the elders 
of the church. f Does this mean old men of the church 
or officers of the church, which ? We cannot say. 

But in my lecture this evening I am to speak of 
something more than this etymologic and theoretic 
presbyterianism. We have two meeting-houses in this 
city, and two churches, called Presbyterian. And it 
is of the denomination which they represent that I am 
to speak the praises, because of excellencies. I have 
already shown, under the first head, how excellent and 
natural the presbyterian theory is. And now : — 

Who are Presbyterians ii* this country ? Presby- 

* I Tim. v. 1. t Acts xx. 17. 

2 



26 PRESBYTERIAN. 

terians are properly all those who regulate and con- 
trol church affairs by elders, — ruling elders and teach- 
ing elders, who are ordained and organized into judi- 
catories, rising higher and higher in dignity and au- 
thority, and including larger and larger territory under 
their jurisdiction. The usual names for these judi- 
catories are : session for a church ; presbytery for three 
or more churches in a district ; synod for three or 
more presbyteries ; and general assembly of commis- 
sioners from every presbytery in the land. 

But in addition to this simple and excellent church 
order, Presbyterians hold fast a confession of faith 
and two catechisms, usually called the Westminster 
confession or symbols. These standards are the pro- 
duction of a great company of English ministers and 
laymen, with four or five delegates from Scotland. 
They were called together by the famous long parlia- 
ment in 1543. And they did much work; they came 
very near making the Presbyterian Church the 
established church of England. 

In this famous assembly Presbyterians and con- 
gregationists sat and voted side by side. And when 
in after years both denominations were humbled by 
persecution, their ministers came together in London, 
and both parties gave up their old names and took for 
their common denominator "United Brethren." 



THE CREED AND CATECHISM. 2J 

In this country it has always been difficult to keep 
the fences in good repair between the congregationists 
and Presbyterians. In New England, the two words 
used to mean the same thing. But of late more atten- 
tion has been given to fence-building, with painful suc- 
cess. The name United Brethren is no longer 
needed. 

Having given you thus a very meagre sketch of 
Presbyterian polity and the origin of its doctrine, I 
can now speak of a second excellence of Presbyte- 
rianism. 

2. The creed and catechism of the Presbyterian 
Church as put into the hands of its members is more 
broadly based on holy Scripture, and more copiously il- 
lustrated by citations of the text, than any other symbol 
of doctrine that I have ever met. 

This is as it should be. For "the supreme Judge," 
say these Presbyterians, " by whom all controversies 
" of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of 
" councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of 
u men, and private spirits are to be examined ; and in 
" whose sentence we are to rest ; can be no other but 
" the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. ,, It is well, 
therefore, that the creed and catechisms of a church 
that puts so high an estimate on Scripture should be 
grounded and built upon many and strong quotations. 



28 PRESBYTERIAN. 

A careful student of what is pleasantly called the 
little Blue-book of the Presbyterian Church will 
find that the marginal notes, which are all of them 
quoted from the Bible, serve admirably as a concord- 
ance, by help of which almost any Scripture that re- 
lates to personal piety or systematic theology may 
be readily found. And although, in one or two mi- 
nor particulars, I cannot accept the doctrine of these 
creeds or teach them, (nor in all my life have I ever 
seen a man that did accept or teach all the articles 
of these creeds,) yet they are, for substance of doc- 
trine, a most excellent digest of Scripture. And no 
person that would merit the name of an intelligent chris- 
tian disciple, can afford to dispense with this manual 
of instruction, based as it is upon the Word of God. 

Its very faults grow out of his excellencies. Its 
garblings and misapplials of Scripture are the result of 
the unusual familiarity of the fathers with the words of 
the received version, and the habit they had in com- 
mon with pious Israelites of thinking and talking -in 
Scripture phrases. 

It is to be feared that many families belonging to 
the Presbyterian Church are not aware of the ex- 
cellencies of this little book of sound doctrine. It is 
to be feared that there are many Presbyterian families 
that do not own it, and others who have never so much 



NORMAL PROTESTANT ORDER. 29 

as seen it or heard it read. Very few christians make 
use of the privileges which are peculiarly their own. 
Nearly all of our churches are more prompt to resent 
an assault made upon their precious things, than they 
are to make good use of them in daily discipline, and 
illustrate their excellence in daily conversation. 

But however neglected and unknown these West- 
minster symbols may be among the people called 
Presbyterian, they are nevertheless peculiarly excel- 
lent in being broadly based on holy Scripture, and 
copiously illustrated by citations of the text. 

3. Presbyterian order is the true and original type 
of protestant organization. 

The churches at the Reformation fell naturally into 
Presbyterian order; and at this day, whenever protest- 
ants undertake any organization at all, they tend to- 
ward Presbyterianism. It is very difficult to keep 
from slipping into it. I do not say Presbyterian 
doctrine, but Presbyterian order. 

Thus a methodist rejoices in an official board, or 
session; a quarterly conference, preachers' meeting 
or presbytery ; an annual conference or synod ; a 
general conference or general assembly. As soon as 
lay members are admitted to these bodies, there will 
be no substantial difference, between the methodist 
order and the Presbyterian. 



30 PRESBYTERIAN. 

Congregationists have a church committee for ses- 
sion ; association for presbytery ; general association 
for synod ; general council for general assembly. And 
whenever congregational ministers get together, they 
usually have one of their number on guard as a censor, 
to keep the brethren from talking Presbyterian words 
and acting Presbyterian acts. As Darwin would say, 
all protestant varieties show a tendency to revert to the 
Presbyterian original. We all take to it naturally. 

4. The Presbyterian is, in my judgment, the church 
order which can be most easily illustrated and justified 
by the New Testa??ie?it. 

I do not mean that all the four grades of judicatory 
now known as Presbyterian can be found in the New 
Testament, grade for grade ; but only that the elements 
of this system are apparent and more easily found, 
than the elements of any other system. There is diffi- 
culty in explaining and harmonizing all that the New 
Testament teaches us as to apostolic usage and early 
church order ; all of us are tempted to stretch some 
Scriptures and shrink others in order to justify our 
own usages. But in my judgment the Presbyterian 
has need to stretch and shrink and explain his proof- 
texts far less frequently than any other denominational 
christian that I know of. The Roman catholic who 
tries to prove his hierarchy at one extreme, and the 



AVOIDS EXTREMES. 3 1 

quaker and independent who try to prove personal 
sufficiency at the other extreme, have hard work of it, 
both of them. But the Presbyterian sails through 
the New Testament with the wind free and every sail 
drawing, — his navigation is easy. This suggests, 
Scripture aside : — 

5. Presbyterianism is a happy mean between spirit- 
ual despotism and spiritual lawlessness. 

We have a session, using all the authority that should 
ever be exercised by a christian church over its mem- 
bers, — a session of ruling elders. At the same time 
this session, having been elected by the people, can 
with great difficulty be induced to become lords over 
God's heritage. Meanwhile, lest the session level 
downward, and wallow in error and democratic license, 
several churches are associated, and the acts of session 
are reviewed and criticised by presbytery. 

To avoid falling into localisms and provincialisms, 
we have synod and assembly, and with them all that 
shadowy sublimity which so satisfies feeble minds, that 
need to feel that they are not mere church-goers in a 
little meeting-house, depending upon God, but mem- 
bers also of the great Presbyterian Church. Thus 
in Presbyterianism we have a happy mean between 
despotism and anarchy, — an ecclesiastical republic. 
This fact suggests : — 



32 PRESBYTERIAN. 

6. Presbyterianism is in striking agreenient with the 
political order of these United States. 

All our laws are enacted in the name of the people 
by elected representatives of the people. The people 
do not pretend to govern themselves. We are con- 
tent with a representative system. If, as many sup- 
pose, it be at all desirable that the institutions of the 
church and of the state should be in harmony, then, 
beyond all question, Presbyterian or representative 
government is the church order most nearly in accord 
with our state and national usage. 

But you will ask me : ■ What special religious quality 
or excellence marks the Presbyterian Church ? 
What particular truth does she emphasize ? I cannot 
tell you. Protestant churches are so nearly identical 
in their religious doctrine that no fair-minded man can 
choose between them. They are so much alike that a 
teachable stranger has need to inquire, at close of ser- 
vice, with what church he has been worshiping. 

If urgently pressed to name some characteristic of 
the denomination, some quality emphasized by it more 
incessantly than by any other, I might venture to 
say : — 

7. The Presbyterians are inclined to give unusual 
emphasis to law, and conscience, and duty. 

The people as a whole are more sober, and on Sun- 



MAGNIFIES LAW AND DUTY. 33 

days more solemn, than the people of some sister de- 
nominations. The Roman catholic finds mystery and 
awe in religion. The Presbyterian finds duty and 
law. The catholic makes much of salvation by Christ. 
The Presbyterian makes much of pardon and justi- 
fication by Christ. 

On the whole we may say that the Presbyterian 
Church is the church of sobriety, solemnity, and 
decorum. Not that other churches are destitute of 
these qualities, but that this Church illustrates them 
conspicuously. 

But let it not be supposed that this Church is a 
narrow or bigoted church. Like all other churches 
she is afflicted here and there by little, narrow men, 
who misrepresent the genius and doctrine of the 
Church ; and the Mother suffers because of her blun- 
dering sons. I therefore gladly note, as an excel- 
lence of the Presbyterians : — 

8. Their comprehensive and elastic acceptance of other 
christiaiis as members with them of the church of Christ, 

But one denomination that I know of can equal the 
Presbyterian in preparation for christian union at 
any moment. 

The Presbyterian declares that " God alone is 
" Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the 
" teachings and commandments of men which are in 
2* c 



34 PRESBYTERIAN. 

" anything contrary to his Word. Therefore, they con- 
" sider the rights of private judgment in all matters 
" that respect religion as universal and inalienable." 

They also believe that there " are truths and forms 
" with respect to which men of good character and 
" principles may differ. And in all these, they think it 
" the duty of private christians and of societies to ex- 
" ercise mutual forbearance." 

Listen to the invitation which a Presbyterian 
gives to the sacrament : — 

" He (the minister) shall invite to the Lord's table 
" such as, being sensible of their lost and helpless state 
" by sin, depend upon the atonementof Christ forpardon 
" and acceptance with God ; such as, being instructed 
" in the gospel-doctrine, have a competent knowledge 
" to discern the Lord's body ; and such as desire to 
"renounce their sins and are determined to lead a 
" holy and Godly life." 

Some of you may be comforted to know how large 
the welcome given by a true Presbyterian to his child- 
ren in the bosom of the Church. He agrees with 
the episcopal, the Roman catholic, and the Lutheran 
in his love of children. See : — 

" Children born within the pale of the Church 
" and dedicated to God in baptism, are under the in- 
" spection and government of the Church ; and are 



SENIOR CHURCH IN ELMIRA. 35 

" to be taught to read and repeat the catechism, the 
" apostles' creed, and the Lord's prayer. They are to 
" be taught to pray, to abhor sin, to fear God, and to 
" obey the Lord Jesus Christ. And when they come 
" to years of discretion, if they be free from scandal, 
" appear sober and steady, and to have sufficient 
" knowledge to discern the Lord's body, they ought to 
u be informed that it is their duty and their privilege 
" to come to the Lord's supper." 

Citizens of Elmira! The oldest church and the 
largest meeting-house in this city are called Presby- 
terian. By right of seniority, to this old first church 
belongs the title, The Church of Christ in Elmira. 
In essentials, all true christians are in accord with 
her. In non-essentials, all Presbyterians worthy of 
their honored name set us a grand example of com- 
prehensiveness and charity. 

Peace be upon them, and upon all that anywhere 
call upon our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 



III. 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 



LECTURE III. 

PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

"Let another man praise thee, and not thine own 
mouth ; a stranger, and not thine own lips." — Prov. 
xxvii. 2. 

IF any man, however deserving, begin to show off 
and brag, speaking often of his past record and 
public services, he makes himself offensive. But when 
a general gives credit to his brother generals, and 
ascribes victory to their wisdom and to the valor of 
the army, then all are pleased. Such words are twice 
useful, — they profit him who speaks and them of 
whom they are spoken. 

In something the same way we are offended when 
we hear or read the words which churchmen speak 
in praise each of his own church or denomination. 
They seem conceited, arrogant, offensive. They pro- 
mote vain-glory at home and ill-will abroad. 

But it has seemed to me that christian pastors and 
prelates might at least be as /courteous one to another 
as army officers are ! And if we would silence our 



40 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

own boastfulness, and note and praise the beauty of 
our sister churches more, there might come to pass 
among christian people a smiling charity and peaceful 
rejoicing. 

I invite you, therefore, this evening, to view the 
beauty, the uses, and the truth that belong to those 
christians among us who are popularly called 

EPISCOPALIANS. 

In this city there are four kinds of church that 
have bishops, and therefore may call themselves epis- 
copal : viz. Roman episcopal, Protestant Episcopal, 
methodist episcopal, and American methodist epis- 
copal Zion. 

Only one of these is generally known as the 
Episcopal Church, viz. the Protestant Episcopal, 
represented in this city by two parishes and a mis- 
sion. 

This Episcopal Church in America is in fact a 
continuation of the church of England. As gardeners 
lay down a branch of a vine and stake it fast and 
cover it till it takes root, and then cut it off and leave 
it to grow by its own roots ; so the Episcopal Church 
in this land was a branch of the church of England, 
which was laid down and rooted ; and by the war of 



UNLIKE THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 41 

the Revolution was cut off, to grow ever since with 
roots of its own. 

The Church in America differs from the church 
of England in those matters chiefly that must needs 
have been changed because these states ceased to be 
colonies and became a federal nation with a new and 
differing political constitution. Instead of king, the 
Churchman in America says president; for parlia- 
ment, congress. He needs a prayer quite new for his 
legislature and governor, for in England there are none 
such. But he drops all mention of the gunpowder 
plot, the martyrdom of Charles I., the accession and 
happy reign of our sovereign lady, queen Victoria ; 
and all other strictly English events. 

The American Churchman omits, too, the Athana- 
sian creed, so called, which is long and true, but has 
a dry and funny rattle to it that makes irreverent 
people smile. 

Of all the protestant churches, the Episcopal best 
deserves the name reformed. She preserves so many 
of the usages and excellences of the Roman church, 
and so few of her errors, that is easy to see that she is 
a reformed church. Other protestant churches seem 
revolutionary rather than reformed. 

"The Reformation' 7 wasy in England, more than 
two hundred years long. There were no volcanic con- 



42 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

vulsions : no one brilliant fourth-of-July day in which 
the great reform was proclaimed. Nor was the refor- 
mation purely and disinterestedly religious. 

When the pope (Urban V., 1365) demanded large 
sums of money in payment of tribute long in arrear, 
parliament gave willing ear to the reformer, Wickliffe, 
who denied the authority of Rome, and so excused 
the nation from paying its debt. Afterward (1380) 
this same great man finished a translation of the 
Latin Bible into English. He wrote tracts for the 
people. He revived preaching to the people. His 
disciples went diligently up and down the land, teach- 
ing and preaching the truth and the authority of holy 
Scripture. 

Thus, one hundred and fifty years before Luther 
was heard of as a revolutionary reformer (15 18), the 
leaven of Bible reading and private thinking was at 
work among the English people. 

But the church of England was still Roman cath- 
olic, notwithstanding the work that was going on 
among the people. The followers of Wickliffe, known 
in history as Lollards, furnished thousands of names 
to the bishops* lists of heretics, elsewhere known as 
the noble army of martyrs. 

During the reign of Henry VIII. (1534), the church 
in England was declared independent of Rome. This 



KING HENRY VIII. 43 

was perhaps the crisis of the English reformation. 
King Henry was a man not unlike famous king David, 
in his love of woman, his domestic troubles, his tem- 
pestuous piety, and intermittent conscientiousness. He 
was a many-sided, large-patterned man ■ a riddle to all 
small-eyed writers of history. 

This singular king, having married his brother's 
widow by special permission of the church of Rome, 
by and by applied to that same church to declare the 
marriage unlawful; and when the bishop of Rome 
would not grant this required divorce, Henry, the 
headstrong and hearty, declared it himself, married 
again, laughed at his own excommunication, caused 
himself to be proclaimed supreme head of the church 
of England, and to prove that in these steps he was 
quite right, he cut off any man's head who should dis- 
pute or deny the same : — e. g. Sir Thomas More 

(iS34). 

Here then we come to a church independent of 
Rome, but not yet reformed. The Bible was in many 
churches, yet men not a few were slain for reading it 
and talking it. Among these, William Tyndale de- 
serves mention ; for he translated the New Testa- 
ment into felicitous English, and published much wise 
doctrine, in consequence $f which he was duly 
strangled and burned. 



44 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

The king multiplied Bibles, but cut off Bible read 
ers. 

After Henry and his stormy ways came pious and 
gentle Edward VI. to the throne, and at once the 
flower of reform began to blossom, and the church to 
show the features which she wears to-day. 

The English Bible was read as now by lessons at 
morning and evening service. The general liturgy was 
translated and said in English. The creed of the 
Church was packed in forty-two articles, afterwards 
reduced to the famous thirty-nine. Accordantly, both 
the bread and the wine were given to the common 
people at the sacrament, and other reforms and purify- 
in gs were set afoot. 

Edward's reign was a short one (1547-53), long 
enough to introduce these changes, yet short enough to 
prevent the protestants from getting too much head- 
way. 

After him came the pious and conscientious but 
gloomy and unhappy queen Mary, who strove to bring 
the realm of England back to Rome. She caused 
persuasive fires to be kindled for the good of dissenting 
souls. She did what she could, but she could not undo 
the reformation. Parliament and the people were 
too much for her. But her opposition kept the re- 
formers from running into extravagance and cruelty. 



FIRST AMERICAN PARISH. 45 

After Mary came Elizabeth, who caused Roman 
catholics at one extreme and puritans at the other to 
feel her scorn, and suffer fines, imprisonment, and 
death. 

Then came James I. of England, by whose order 
our present Bible was prepared and printed and au- 
thorized. 

Thus from reign to reign the church of England 
has come down, acquiring little by little her present 
shape, and laying off the corruption and unreason of 
the Roman church, as formerly existing and adminis- 
tered in a rude age. 

The prayer-book may be called substantially com- 
plete as we now have it, in the middle of the seven- 
teenth century (1661). Thus this church of Eng- 
land spent nearly three hundred years on her work 
of purifying and simplifying. And of all protestant 
churches therefore she best deserves the name re- 
form: 

In this country, the first parish of this Church was 
probably that in Jamestown, Virginia (1606 or 160S). 
Down to the war of the Revolution the Church in this 
land was under the care of the bishops of London. 

Shortly after the Revolution an application was 
made to parliament to allow an American bishop to be 
consecrated. But the puritans and presbyterians op- 



46 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

posed the proposition, and so Mr. Seabury, the candi- 
date, had to put up with a second-rate consecration at 
the hands of certain Scotch bishops. But at last 
(1787) parliament allowed the archbishop of Canter- 
bury to consecrate three regular, first-class bishops for 
New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia respectively. 
Since then the holy unction has not been allowed to 
fail. With pious care it has been propagated. And 
the Episcopal Church in these United States stands 
to-day as truly and regularly in the line of apostolic suc- 
cession as the church of England herself. 

After this mere outline of her history it remains that 
I note some of her excellent uses and beauties. 

1. The Episcopal Church offers for our use the most 
venerable liturgy in the English tongue. 

The devotional treasures of the Roman catholic 
church are locked up. Her matchless literature is 
embalmed and buried in Latin. But in English there 
are no lessons, gospels, psalms, collects, confessions, 
thanksgivings, prayers, — in one word, no religious 
form-book, — that can stand a moment in comparison 
with the prayer-book of the Episcopal Church in the 
twofold quality of richness and age. 

The proper name, because truly descriptive, for 
this Church, would be Church of the prayer-book. 



AN EXCELLENT PRAYER-BOOK. 47 

As is the way with all other churches, so here, the 
Church champions and leaders have many wise things 
to say about the Church and her prerogative. But 
the pious multitude that frequent her courts are drawn 
thither mostly by love of the prayers and praises, 
the litanies and lessons of the prayer-book. 

And, brethren of every name, I certify you that 
you rarely hear in any church a prayer spoken in Eng- 
lish, that is not indebted to this prayer-book for some 
of its choicest phrases. 

And further : I doubt that life has in store for any 
of you an uplift so high or downfall so deep but 
that you can find company for your soul and fitting 
words for your lips among the treasures of this book 
of common prayer. 

In all time of our tribulation ; in all time' of our pros- 
perity ; i?i the hour of death and i?i the day of judg- 
ment : Good lord deliver us. 

As a consequence of the prayer-book and its use, I 
note : — 

2. The Episcopal Church preserves a high grade 
of dignity, decency, propriety, and permanence in her 
public offices. 

In nearly every newspaper you may read some 
funny story based upon the ignorance, or the eccen- 
tricity, or blasphemous familiarity of some extempo- 



4§ PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

rizing prayer-maker. All of you here present have 
been at some time shocked or bored by public devo- 
tional performances. Nothing of this sort ever occurs 
in the Episcopal Church. All things are done 
decently and in order. 

And so too of permanence and its accumulating 
worth of holy association ; no transient observer can 
adequately value this treasure of a birthright Church- 
man. 

To be using to-day the self-same words that have 
through the centuries declared the faith or made 
known the prayer of that mighty multitude who, being 
now delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy 
and felicity : — 

To be baptized in early infancy, and never to have 
known a time when we were not recognized and 
welcomed among the millions who have entered the 
Church by the same door : — 

To be, in due time, confirmed in a faith that has 
sustained a noble army of confessors, approving its 
worth through persecutions and prosperities, a strength 
to the tried and a chastening to the worldly-minded : — 

To be married by an authority before which kings 
and peasants bow alike, asking benediction upon the 
covenant that, without respect of persons, binds by 
the same words of duty the highest and the lowest : — 



APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 49 

To bring our new-born children as we were brought, 
to begin where we began and to grow up to fill our 
places : — 

To die in the faith and almost r^ear the gospel words 
soon to be spoken over our own graves, as over the 
thousand times ten thousand of them who are asleep 
in Jesus : — 

In short, to be a devout and consistent Church- 
man, brings a man through aisles fragrant with holy 
association, and companied by a long procession of 
the good, chanting as they go a unison of piety and 
hope, until they come to the holy place where shining 
saints shall sing the new song of the redeemed. And 
these sing with them. 

Another excellence I note : — 

3. The Episcopal Church furnishes to all who 
need such comfort, the assurance of an organic and un- 
broken imity and succession from Jesus Christ, through 
the apostles, by a line of aicthentic bishops y down to bishop 
Huntington of this diocese. 

King Henry VIII. and queen Elizabeth, with their 
proclamations and parliaments, are so conspicuous, 
and fill so much space in the merely political history 
of the English church, that many able writers deny 
that the river of apostolic succession, so dammed by 
them, could ever get around the dam and flow along 
3 d 



50 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

again pure and uncontaminated. I cannot decide 
this question absolutely. What I say is this : — 

The apostolic succession in the Episcopal Church 
can be traced back so many hundred years into the 
dim past, that it is no shame to any common man to 
say, I believe it to extend back to Peter, Paid, and John; 
and he who verily believes that the ordaining or con- 
firming hand of the bishop of his diocese is electric 
with the spiritual life that proceeds from Jesus of 
Galilee, will find it a hand of virtue and worth. He 
who doubts will find it a hand of form and cere- 
mony. 

And so without stopping to decide the question 
whether our bishop is really a successor of Paul or 
John, I say that the Episcopal Church affords so 
much evidence that she has in her episcopate the true 
succession, that it is no shame to a common man to 
believe her. And if he believes in his bishop he will 
get from him all the benefit that can come from 
bishops. 

Brethren, many needy souls are not able to lay hold 
upon God one by one. They cannot appropriate a 
gospel promise to themselves. Like Job of old, they 
say, If I had called and he had answe7-ed me, yet would 
I not believe that he had hearkened unto my voice. 

Such extreme and exemplary humility asks for and 



PROVIDES GOOD DRILL, i 5 1 

needs a church ark and the humble place and privi- 
lege of a private passenger — the ark of God that shall 
outride the deluge. The church of Christ in which is 
found salvation. 

I say, then, that the claims of this Episcopal 
Church to be such an ark of God, or church of 
Christ, endowed with sacraments, absolutions, and 
profitable authority, are for all practical uses valid. 

I leave historians and ecclesiastics to their endless 
words, and assert that the poor in spirit who seek 
comfort and salvation through the offices of the Epis- 
copal Church are as well off in her as they can be 
in any church. And since many are profoundly pre- 
judiced against the church of Rome, I am happy to 
point all such to a sure welcome in the Episcopal 
Church, with sacraments, successions, and authority 
as good as the best. 

4. The Episcopal Church is excellent in her pro- 
visions for christian education a?td pious drill. 

Churches that avowedly receive infants as members 
must necessarily provide education for them. Accord- 
ingly, the Episcopal Church is characteristically a 
church for the training of children, just as some sister 
churches are characteristically revival churches for the 
conversion of grown folk. 

In the prayer-book and the Church almanac you 



$2 | PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

find the christian year divided into periods separated 
by high days, — monuments and memorials of christian 
story. This christian calendar agrees very nearly with 
that of the Roman church. He is an unusually well- 
informed christian who can read over this catalogue 
of days, and in few words tell the story that each 
day celebrates. But a birthright Churchman who 
has been quietly trained in his Church home for 
fifteen years will need very little teaching more. 

In connection with this calendar is a system of les- 
sons, in following which the reader is led through the 
entire Bible each year, and through its more profitable 
parts monthly or often er. 

He who for years has been a Churchman, and yet 
remains ill-grounded in Scripture, shows himself an 
unworthy son of a very faithful mother. 

By the lessons, gospels, epistles, psalms, and collects 
appointed for special fast or feast days, the events 
commemorated by the day are wrought into the 
memory of every worshiper ; and by seasons longer 
or shorter of special religious effort and observance, 
this Church satisfies the same want which other 
churches satisfy by weeks of prayer, protracted meet- 
ings, and revivals. 

A good school is a dull place to any visitor who 
rushes in to find sensation and excitement. He will 



USES CREEDS PROPERLY. 53 

call it dry, poky, stupid. In like manner, many re- 
ligious sensation makers and sensation seekers will 
promptly vote the Church calendar and all her smooth 
machinery of pious drill a very dull substitute for a 
regular, rousing revival. But, in the long run, the 
church that steadily trains and teaches will outlive 
the church that only arouses and startles. If ye con- 
tinue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. 

5. This Church makes a distinction between her 
creed as a church, to which all her officers must sub- 
scribe, and that much shorter declaration of faith which 
she expects from her children. 

This Church never vexes converts with profound 
questions 'in theology. Of those who would receive 
the Lord's supper she requires "that they repent 
"them truly of their former sins, steadfastly purpos- 
" ing to lead a new life ■ that they have a lively faith 
"in God's mercy through Christ, and a thankful re- 
" membrance of his death, and that they be in charity 
"with all men." 

To any and to all such, asking no further ques- 
tions, this catholic and most generous Church ap- 
proaches, and by the hand of her priest gives the 
consecrated bread with benediction : — "The body of 
" our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, pre- 
" serve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take 



54 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 

" and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee; 
"feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving? 
And with like words the consecrated wine : "Drink 
"this in remembrance that Chris fs blood was shed for 
" thee, — and be thankful? 

Citizens and christians all ! — Because this Episco- 
pal Church is a reformed church, and not revolution- 
ary ; — because her book of prayer is rich and venera- 
ble above all in the English tongue ; — because her 
ritual promotes decency, dignity, propriety, and per- 
manence ; — because her historic union through the 
apostles with Christ comforts and satisfies so many 
souls ; — because she adopts her infant children and 
provides for them education and drill; — and because 
with large hospitality she proffers her sacrament to 
all true believers of every name : — Therefore from her 
own psalter let us take the words wherewith to bless 
her. 

" They shall prosper that love thee. Peace be 
" within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy pal- 
"aces. For thy brethren and companions' sakes I 
" will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house 
" of the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good." 



A CATHOLIC PRAYER. 55 



Prayer. 

" O God, the creator and preserver of all mankind, we 
"humbly beseech thee for all sorts and co7iditions of men ; 
" that thou wouldst be pleased to make thy ways known 
" unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More 
" especially we pray for thy Holy Church universal ; that 
" it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that 
" all who profess and call themselves christians may be 
u led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of 
" spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of lifer 
Amen. 



IV. 



METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 



LECTURE IV. 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

Look not every man on his own things, but every 

MAN ALSO ON THE THINGS OF OTHERS. — Phil. ii. 4. 

SELF-LOVE and self-service are natural. Self- 
protection is nature's first law. A generous ap- 
preciation of other people and of strangers is not 
natural. It is an acquired grace. As with the indi- 
vidual so with churches. To know and love and be 
at rest in one's own church is natural. With generous 
comprehension to know and admire all sister churches 
is an acquired grace. 

It seems a pity that good men must needs die and 
go to heaven in order to find each other out ! It is a 
pity that churches and the clergy can promptly tell the 
errors that deface sister churches, but with less of 
eloquence declare the graces that beautify them. 

Which shall we look at, the rose-buds or the rose- 
bugs, when we visit a neighbor's conservatory ? Leave 
the bugs to the gardener, and let us enjoy the buds 
and blossoms. I speak to you, at this time, of the 



6o METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

roses that bud and blossom in the Methodist gar- 
den. 

The denomination which we call Methodist Epis- 
copal is known in Great Britain and her colonies as 
Wesleyan Methodist. The beginnings of this great 
Church were simultaneous in England and America. 
Revivals, of unprecedented and amazing power, fol- 
lowed the preaching and praying of Wesley and White- 
field, and of other men who were moved to the work 
by their example. In this country the fruit of these 
revivals was readily harvested by churches already 
existing, and no distinctively Methodist organization 
seemed called for. The Methodist revivals began in 
both lands. The Methodist organization and system 
began in Great Britain. Thither, then, let us look and 
gather up a little history of them. 

In 1729 there were four young men at Oxford uni- 
versity, England, who became intensely anxious to do 
the right thing and please God. They studied, they 
prayed, they fasted, they examined themselves. They 
went gospeling to the prisons among felons and thieves, 
and teaching among the children of the poor. The 
more famous members of this " Holy club " were John 
and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield. But per- 
haps the most useful member of all was one Morgan, 
by whose sweet temper and good sense the company 



REVIVALS IN ENGLAND. 6 1 

were exercised in works of charity, instead of growing 
fat and foolish with pious dreams, or crazy with ascetic 
ecstasies. So Jesus in his day set his holy apostolic 
club at work as well as at prayer. 

A small lamp shines far in the dark, and all England 
was dark enough when Whitefield began to preach. 

Sometimes because the rectors of parishes would 
not open the church doors, but oftener because the 
meeting-houses were too small for the crowds, White- 
field preached in the open air. Reluctantly John Wes- 
ley found himself drawn into the same novel, if not 
disorderly, practice. 

Astounding conversions multiplied; and, as in the 
days of Jesus and the apostles, it seemed as if the 
lowest and worst people were the ones most moved by 
this new and great power of God. 

The orderly, and, at that time, sleepy church of Eng- 
land, could not understand this new blaze of enthu- 
siasm. Pentecostal revivals scared them as much as 
they would us. And although Wesley and his preach- 
ers reverenced the church and counseled all converts 
to go to the church for confirmation and the sacra- 
ments, yet the converts would not go \ or, going, were 
not at home or comforted. Separate organization 
was forced upon these earnest men. 

In London, for instance, eight or ten persons came 



62 METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

to John Wesley and desired that he would spend some 
time among them, and " advise them how to flee from 
the wrath to come." Here began a "United soci- 
ety," for no one dreamed of a new or dissenting 
church. They met in " the Foundry/' an old, deserted 
government building. 

This was the first purely Methodist organization, 
free from all Moravian and from all Calvinistic admix- 
ture. In 1839, therefore, the Methodists throughout 
the world joined to celebrate their centenary, unani- 
mously agreeing to reckon from the year 1739, when 
these " United brethren " did unwittingly found a 
church, although they only meant to have good meetings 
and help one another to escape from the wrath to come. 

Similar societies sprung up all over Great Britain, 
and naturally looked for guidance to the preachers 
by whose words they had been quickened ; these 
preachers in turn looked to Wesley and to the London 
society ; and so, as they came together once a year or 
oftener to confer and compare experiences and results, 
their meetings became conferences ; and the minutes 
of these meetings were and are the constitution of 
Methodism. The discipline in use to-day is but a 
digest of the results and conclusions of these earnest 
conferences, presided over by John Wesley. The first 
of these conferences was held in London in 1744. 



CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP. 6$ 

But before this the need of the "societies" had 
been so great that John and Charles Wesley, without 
other help from man, prepared " General rules of the 
United societies." These rules seem to me a better 
basis for church organization than those creeds to 
which our ears have become wonted. Note an extract 
or two. They define a " United society," or, as we 
call it, a Methodist Church, as : — 

" A company of men having the form and seeking 
" the power of Godliness ; united in order to pray to- 
" gether, and to watch over one another in love, that 
" they may help each other to work out their salvation." 

But one condition of membership was stipulated : — 
"A desire to flee from the wrath to come and be 
" saved from their sins." 

" This desire must be shown by doing no harm, and 
" by doing good. Avoid profane swearing, Sabbath- 
" breaking, drunkenness, buying or selling liquors or 
" drinking them, except in cases of extreme necessity. 
" Avoid fighting, quarreling, brawling, going to law, re- 
a turning evil for evil or railing, for railing. Avoid using 
" many words in buying or selling, speaking evil of 
" magistrates or ministers. Avoid gold ornaments and 
" costly apparel. Avoid borrowing without a probabil- 
" ity of paying, or running up shop accounts when one 
" cannot pay." . ' 



64 METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

The good to be done is of kinds as follow : — 
" Doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as 
" possible, to all men ; to their bodies, by giving food 
" to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting and 
" helping the sick and the prisoners ; to their souls, by 
" instructing, reproving, exhorting all they have any in- 
" tercourse with. By attending on all the ordinances 
" of God, such as public worship, ministry of the Word, 
" the Lord's supper, family and private prayer, search- 
" ing the Scriptures, and fasting." These are some 
of the common sense and pious requirements of the 
Methodists. Gainsay them who can ! 

The heroic endurance and achievements of these 
christian preachers and people are almost incredi- 
ble. Abate three or four miracles — as the lame 
man healed by Peter and John, the death of Ana- 
nias and Sapphira, the deliverances from prison of 
Peter, Paul and Silas — abate these, and St. Luke 
records in all the Acts no daring more heroic, no de- 
votion more absolute, and no victories more bril- 
liant, than may be read in the annals of these early 
Methodists. Of these evangelic preachers we may 
say, as was said long ago of other men of faith : — 
They "had trial of cruel mockings and scourgihgs 
" [and duckings] ; yea, moreover, of bonds [fines] and 
" imprisonments. They were stoned, they were . . . . 



"not schismatic. 65 

u tempted, .... were destitute, afflicted, tormented ; 
11 of whom the world was not worthy." 

All this within the last hundred years ! Men are 
probably now living who have seen and talked with 
John Wesley. And, which is very noteworthy, Wesley 
and his preachers were not noisy destructives nor rev- 
olutionists. To the day of his dying, John Wesley 
was set against any splitting off from the church of 
England. He himself was a priest of that church. 
He reckoned his great work to be a quickening, a re- 
vival, in the old church. Like Jesus he aimed not to 
destroy but to fill full. Whatever appearance of schism 
marked the Methodist movement during Wesley's 
lifetime was necessitated by the intolerance of church- 
men and by the outcry of his multiplying societies, 
famine-stricken for the sacraments. Fifty years after 
the founding of his London society, when he could 
reckon preachers by hundreds and Methodists by 
thousands (293 and 71,000), Wesley still counsels ad- 
herence to the church of England. " I declare once 
" more that I live and die a member of the church of 
" England, and that none who regard my judgment or 
" advice will ever separate from it." 

In England to-day many Methodist societies use a 
liturgy selected from the prayer-book and arranged by 
John Wesley. Many Methodists, having pious love 



66 METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

for the church of England, send their children to the 
bishops of that church for confirmation. Intelligent 
Methodists of Great Britain even now prefer to call 
their churches "societies," and their meeting-houses 
" chapels," and their bishops " superintendents." 

But in this country the Methodists stand up and 
thrive with something more of stiffness, strength, and 
spread. They are not a vine, but a tree. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church in America, 
like the Wesleyan societies in Great Britain, began 
with little meetings of right earnest men and women 
anxious to be saved from the wrath to come. John 
Wesley, and yet more extensively George Whitefield, 
had preached in nearly all of what we now call the 
Atlantic states from Georgia to Maine. But they 
gathered no churches. 

In 1766 some Irish emigrants in New York city 
were stirred up to repent and return from their back- 
slidings by the urgency of one old woman, who bade 
Mr. Embury " preach to us or we shall all go to hell 
together." He preached. A society was gathered, 
and in 1768 Wesley chapel was built on John street, 
New York, and Mr. Embury preached in it in October. 
Preachers came over from England and others sprung 
up at home ; and though the heat of war passion drove 
most of the English preachers back again during the 



AMERICAN BISHOPS. 6? 

Revolution, and many Methodists suffered in person 
and property, yet at the close of the war there re- 
mained forty-three preachers and nearly fourteen 
thousand members in this land. 

To aid these far away brethren and guard them 
against crude and scandalous irregularities, John Wes- 
ley, priest, appointed Thomas Coke, also a priest, to 
be a superintendent or bishop of the Methodists in 
America. 

He in turn ordained Francis Asbury ; and the 
American preachers, in general conference in Balti- 
more, acknowledged these two as their "bishops." 
Ever since then, the Methodist bishops in this land 
are successors of Coke and Asbury ; they in their time 
received ordination from one John Wesley, who was 
not a bishop at all according to men, but was never- 
theless called of God to govern a larger diocese 
than he of Canterbury ever knew — the Methodist 
Church at large. 

Thus much I offer as outline history from 1729, 
when the " Holy club " began to pray at Oxford, down 
to 1839, when Methodists filled their first denomi- 
national century. 

And now, as our text says, let us " look upon the 
things " of these Methodist^ and admire them. True, 
they have been changing many things during the last 



68 METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

thirty years. The features which I am about to de- 
scribe are not so clearly seen to-day as formerly. The 
Methodist Church is in transition. I cannot cast 
her horoscope. But looking back, I note : — 

i. The Methodist is pre-etninently the revival 
church. Other denominations that have had success in 
revivals resemble the Methodist in proportion to their 
success. 

Methodism was, as we have seen, a quickening in 
the church of England. A few men began to make it 
their chief aim in life to please God and attain unto an 
assured sense of acceptance with him. They ceased 
from ceremony and sacrament. They silenced the 
public voice of theology and metaphysics. They went 
out and told men : — You are wicked men. You are 
going to helL You deserve to go. But oh I how God 
has loved you! How he hates to damn you! Repent ! 
Repent and believe on the only Saviour, Jesus the Christ 
of God / Flee from the wrath to come ! Repent, believe, 
pray, declare your faith and behave yourselves ! 

The theology of the Methodist is thus a working 
theology. There is something that man can do and 
he would better be up and doing. God has intrusted 
man with a power to be saved, or to save himself; 
never mind which you call it, so long as you are 
saved. 



TREATMENT OF BACKSLIDERS. 69 

A truly Methodist Church or society is to-day 
what it was at the first, a company of men anxious to 
flee the wrath to come and help each other on toward 
the full assurance of sin pardoned and of God recon- 
ciled. Starting with this single aim, all else that 
is at all peculiar in Methodism has grown up, and 
justifies itself, not by appeals to Scripture or to tra- 
dition or to venerable usage ; but by strong hearty 
christian common sense and utility. Thus, for in- 
stance, we have : — 

2. The Methodist doctrine and usage as to back- 
sliders. 

When Paul the apostle was the revivalist there were 
some Galatians who ran well for a time only. Nor 
he nor any other man can tell who will run well the 
christian race, except by starting them, cheering them, 
and watching the result. Plant one hundred trees and 
ten are to die. " Which ten ? " Plant and see. If ye 
continue in my word then are ye my disciples indeed, 
said Jesus. The only practical test of piety is con- 
tinuance. 

The Methodist doctrine and usage is that they 
who seem to be converted are converted, and should 
be at once encouraged and received as christians. 
Plant them in the church. Give to them the ,com- 
fortable sacrament. If any fall back, and their love 



JO METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

grow cold, call them backsliders ; and as soon as the 
fire burns brightly again, bring them back to it prayer- 
fully and hopefully — warm them up and try them 
again. 

At first they are " probationers " and if they seem 
to fail they are not in peril of excommunication and 
perdition. They are as the shining slops and drops 
that fall back from a full bucket into a deep well ; — 
they were brought up from darkness to light ; they fell 
back ; but then they are not lost for good and all ; 
we '11 be drawing water again some day. 

3. The sa?ne spirit that produced Methodist revivals 
and Methodist theology, brought Methodist hymns 
and Methodist singing to pass. 

If men talk at all they talk their mother tongue. 
If they sing at all they sing the tunes they know. 
The Methodists did not require the people to learn 
a sacred Greek or Hebrew language to talk religion 
withal, nor sacred tunes in which to sing religion. 
They took the people's language and the people's 
tunes and charged them with the gospel story. They 
talked and they sang the words and the melodies of 
the people. 

Charles Wesley wrote hymns to match John Wes- 
ley's and George Whitefield's preaching. That they 
were christian hymns is proved by the fact that nearly 



HYMNS AND TUNES. 7 1 

all churches and sects that use the English tongue 
to this day print and use them. 

Among you, to-day, if any know by heart six chris- 
tian hymns, be sure that Charles Wesley wrote at 
least one of them. Listen to : — 

Lo ! on a narrow neck of land, 
'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand ; 
Yet how insensible. 



Or: 



Or: — 



Or: — 



Or: 



Or: — 



Or 



Or:- 



Weary of wandering from my God, 
And now made ready to return. 

Stay, thou insulted Spirit, stay ! 
Though I have done thee such despite. 

O that my load of sin were gone ! 
O that I could at last submit ! 

O for a thousand tongues to sing 
My great Redeemer's praise ! 

Love divine, all love excelling, 
Joy of heaven to earth come down ! 

Jesus, lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly. 

Let saints below in concert sing 
With those to glory gone ! 



72 METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

Let me quote entire stanzas from this hymn. Is 
there finer sentiment in our language ? 

One family we dwell in him, 
One church above, beneath ; 
Though now divided by the stream, 
The narrow stream, of death ! 

One army of the living God, 

To his command we bow ; — 

Part of the host have crossed the flood, 

And part are crossing now. 

Is not this equal to that splendid Scripture : See- 
ing, then, that we are compassed about with so great 
a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, 
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us 
run our race with patience ! 

If the Methodist Church ever give up her people's 
melodies and take instead " sacred music " ; if she 
ever give up the voice of many singers and take in- 
stead organs and quartet choirs ; if she ever forsake 
the passion of christian love breathed by Wesley and 
take the stately psalm instead : — then will her glory 
indeed fade ; for the half of her revival power over 
rude and wicked men will have departed from her. 

Children of the heavenly King, 
As ye journey sweetly sing. 



CLASS-MEETINGS. 73 

4. The Methodist class and class-meeting ought per- 
haps to have had the very first place in this statement of 
useful a?id peculiar Methodist devices. 

Originally the class-meeting was a device of finan- 
cial order and convenience. The early Methodists 
gave money for orphan asylums and missions before 
they began to build chapels for themselves. They 
were poor. Their gifts were pennies. Save the pen- 
nies. Let these christians be noted by name, from 
twelve to twenty in a book. Let an honest man be 
their leader and receive their cash. Let these leaders 
meet and report weekly to a steward or a preacher ; 
and if any class-member be not at class-meeting, let 
the leader look for him and get his penny and his 
excuse. 

Of course it was at once seen that song and prayer 
and exhortation were in place at these class-meetings. 
Acquaintance was perfected. Gifts were detected and 
developed. The class became the nursery of the 
Church. 

No other christian church that I know of has any 
provision for " watch and care " of its members that 
for a moment can compare with the classes, class- 
leaders, class-meetings, leaders' meetings, and Thurs- 
day meetings of these Methodists. It is Pestalozzi's 
monitorial school system transferred to the Church. 
4 



74 METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

And to life's end every church-member holds per- 
sonal and responsible acquaintance with his brethren 
and his pastor through his class. The enrolled be- 
liever who neglects his class, or fails to profit by it, has 
lost all title to the name Methodist, and probably, 
alas ! to the name christian also. 

5. The Methodists show unusual sagacity and busi- 
ness faculty throughout their entire economy. 

Their name is peculiarly felicitous, — Methodists, 
— men of method, plan-wise people. Any business 
man can see at a glance that the Methodist fathers 
were no fools in finance. The class-meeting penny 
was the rain-drop unit which by multiplication became 
a flood. In these latter days of Methodist million- 
aires and princely gifts and endowments, it is doubt- 
ful whether the consecrated treasure of the church is 
as large in proportion or as constant as in the earlier 
days of pennies and punctuality. 

The pay of preachers, — so much to the man, so 
much more if he marry, and so much for each baby ; 
the pensions for the sick and the superannuated ; the 
great book-concerns and the distribution of their prof- 
its ; the church newspapers and magazines and the 
appointed editors thereof; the endowment of acade- 
mies and colleges; in short, the manufacturing, the 
commercial, the literary, the educational, and the finan- 



BUSINESS SAGACITY. 75 

cial business attended to by a Methodist conference 
is something astounding to an ordinary ecclesiastic. 

Indeed, John Wesley above all preachers that ever 
lived was versatile and courageous in his christian 
enterprises. He founded, probably, the first dispen- 
sary ever known in London, and was for a time 
himself the physician and apothecary. He procured 
and held property to afford a home to widows and 
aged women. He provided a loan society, such as 
should be in every church to-day, and with a capital 
of only fifty dollars relieved two hundred and fifty peo- 
ple in one year and kept the capital whole ! He had 
a head for accounts. His last entry tells his story and 
preaches a sermon to all christians. Says he : — 

" N. B. — For upwards of eighty-six years I have 
" kept my accounts exactly. I will not attempt it any 
" longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction 
" that I save all I can, and give all I can, that is, all I 
"have" Let us follow Wesley in this, even as he fol- 
lowed Christ. 



I have said that the Methodists of this country are 
in transition. The fame of their great achievement 
arrests general attention. ; The movement is so great 
that I cannot measure it. I note the learning of the 



j6 METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

preachers and professors ; I see the meeting-houses 
costly and elaborately appointed ; I hear of endow- 
ments of academies, colleges, seminaries, and univer- 
sities ; I feel the earth tremble as the chariots and 
horsemen of this great christian army go thundering 
by. I know where they came from, and the camps 
they have left, and the victories they have won. God 
prosper and give them good speed ! But be their 
achievements what they may, they cannot more bless 
mankind nor glorify God than have their fathers, who 
believed in the power of the Holy Spirit to convert 
and sanctify ; and, going forth empty-handed, have 
filled the English language with music and with gos- 
pel testimonies ; and have added, it may well be, mil- 
lions of names to the roll of the redeemed. 



V. 

INDEPENDENT. 



BAPTIST AND CONGREGATIONAL. 



LECTURE V. 

BAPTIST AND CONGREGATIONAL. 

" For where two or three are gathered together in my 

NAME, THERE AM I IN THE MIDST OF THEM." — Matt xviii. 20. 

A CONGREGATION that finds this Scripture 
true is contented to have Jesus for company. 
Other and very famous churches find another Scrip- 
ture true and are content with Peter for a founda- 
tion. Contentment is a great good. With Godliness 
it is great gain. 

A Congregationalist (for short Congregationist) 
is one who, being contented with my text, insists that 
"two or three" believers thereto consenting are a 
christian church; as such they are competent to all 
the acts, and they possess all the franchises, which are 
mentioned in the New Testament as pertaining to any 
church of Christ on earth. 

In Great Britain, the Congregationists are still 
called by their first name, — Independents. The 
larger number of Congregationists insist upon im- 
mersion as baptism. Such are called Baptists. I 



80 INDEPENDENT. 

devote this lecture to an exhibition of the uses and 
excellences of Baptists and Congregationists, or 
Independents, — a short name when I would speak 
of both together. 

Their history : — 

When war is raging between great armies, it is not 
difficult to trace the marchings hither and thither of 
the larger bodies. But if the war continue any con- 
siderable time, the whole region called " the seat of 
war " will become alive with scouts and squads and 
single soldiers, patriot rangers, spies, and a rout 
besides of adventurers, camp-followers, bummers and 
thieves. While the achievements of the armies are 
easily noted, the deeds and misdeeds of this great un- 
organized multitude can never be correctly told. The 
noblest heroism and the vilest scoundrelism will find 
illustration among these rangers and guerillas. 

After the same sort, the student of church history 
finds little difficulty in tracing the great churches that 
have perfected themselves and their machinery of 
power, as the Roman, Greek, Nestorian, Anglican, 
Lutheran, presbyterian, and methodist. But when we 
ask for the history of Baptists or Congregation- 
ists, — Independents, — there is no history of them 
as a denomination. 

Although their numbers have been great, their spirit 



SEPARATIONS INEVITABLE. 8 1 

heroic, and their success unmistakable, yet they have 
been like the countless fragments that come rattling 
down a mountain side in company with and following 
after great avalanches. The momentum, the thunder, 
and the fame are with the avalanche ; but the fertility 
afterward, — the vineyards and the gardens are found 
chiefly with the fine detritus, the rubbish left along the 
road where power and greatness went thundering by. 

There never has been a day since Paul rebuked 
Peter, and Barnabas parted from Paul, in which the 
loyalty of brave men to their convictions has not 
compelled them into dissent and so-called schism. 
Around these conscientious, clear-headed men gathers 
promptly a little company, unable to answer their argu- 
ments or resist their personal magnetism. These com- 
pact companies glow with intense heat, their enthusiasm 
amounts to frenzy. • If scattered by persecution they 
are like a rain of fire, igniting wherever they alight. 

Such little congregations make no figure in history, 
yet they have had a very decisive effect upon the be- 
havior and the doctrine of the great churches. Some- 
times these congregations have been devotees of 
falsehood, uncleanness, and folly. At other times 
they have been clean and bright as dew-drops in the 
wilderness, shining and going up. 

Congregational, then, means nothing in history, 
8* l 



82 INDEPENDENT. 

nothing distinctive as good or bad. Baptist means 
nothing in history as good or bad. I take it to be 
quite impossible to do more, in a survey of the past, 
than simply to note that separate and independent 
congregations have been spattered down throughout 
Christendom, and wherever they struck they struck in, 
and witnessed an obstinate confession always ; and many 
times, of course, a heroic and a christian confession. 

It should be borne in mind by all, that not only the 
so-called Congregationists and Baptists of this 
country are really congregational, but the spiritual- 
ists, unitarians, Swedenborgians, and quakers are also 
Congregationists. That is to say, whenever any 
such people come together they are a congregation, 
and claim to be nothing more. 

A man of learning can easily prepare a history of 
Independency in France ; another history of Inde- 
pendency in Germany, showing how the reformers 
needed reforming, and how Luther abhorred the re- 
baptizers or anabaptists ; another history of Indepen- 
dency in England, noting, among other things, how 
Henry VIII. read his Bible and protested against Rome, 
and sturdy Baptists read the same Bible and protested 
against Henry. Rome cursed Henry, and Henry 
cursed the Baptists. 

Hundreds, aye thousands, of Independents have 



COURTESY AND CORRESPONDENCE. 83 

uttered eloquent testimony in every nation of Europe ; 
but these separate churches had not, and have not, any 
organic union. In after years, when by suffering they 
have paid the price of universal toleration, then these 
separate churches will salute each other, and note their 
free agreements, and put forth tendrils ready for grace- 
ful intertwinings. And as they draw together they 
become more and more like a denomination of the 
presbyterian type. 

In this land Congregation ists and Baptists be- 
gan together, having been known in England as Inde- 
pendents, and having suffered together. Yet there 
was not among these pilgrims a perfect agreement as 
to the sacraments of the church, or the extent to 
which civil authority ought to be used to bring con- 
formity to pass. The issue was soon forced in Massa- 
chusetts ; and, as all remember, Roger Williams, be- 
ing convinced that he was himself still unbaptized, 
and being unable to submit his conscience to the 
standing Congregational rule, became an exile, 
and, putting his trust in God, founded the colony 
Rhode Island and the city Providence upon a " demo- 
cratical " constitution, ending with these memorable 
words, — " And let the saints of the Most High walk 
" in this colony without mqlestation, in the name of 
" Jehovah their God, for ever and ever." 



84 INDEPENDENT. 

This broad doctrine of religious toleration — free- 
dom of conscience and religious observance — was pro- 
claimed in Maryland also, a Roman catholic colony ; 
and since those early days has become the common 
law of christian churches throughout the English- 
speaking world. 

In this land Baptists differ from Congregation- 
ists. so called, in their definition of baptism and the 
logical inferences from that definition. 

It is often said that Baptists differ from other 
christians only as to the mode of baptism, — a mere 
trifle. This is a mistake. To a Baptist there is no 
mode of baptism. To cut oft a man's head is one 
mode or sort of amputation, but to cut off his finger is 
not one mode of decapitation. So christian baptism 
is one sort or mode of washing ; but all well-meant 
washings are not modes of baptism ! Because, say 
the Baptists, christian baptism is (a) the immersion 
in water (b) of a christian believer (c) in the name of 
God, — Father, Son, and Spirit. To this sacrament 
thus defined there are and can be no two modes. 

In even- regard except this one sacrament and its 
consequences the Congregationists and Baptists 
are in perfect accord. Both Baptists and Congrega- 
tionists in thickly settled regions are coming to- 
gether in associations, consociations, councils and con- 



BAPTISTS VERY NUMEROUS. 85 

ferences, and are behaving in all but the name and 
theory like presbyterians. Here and there all over 
the land are to be found single churches standing for 
Independency; but the tendency with each year is 
to revert to the presbyterian type, — the tendency to 
which I alluded in my lecture of that denomination.* 

Until twenty years ago the school geographies used 
to record Baptists as the most populous denomina- 
tion in this country. Their strength was chiefly at 
the West and South. (It should be remembered that 
christian baptism originated in a warm climate.) Con- 
gregationists, on the contrary, are a quite small de- 
nomination. And it is worthy of mention that both 
methodists and Congregationists, especially at the 
South, are perceiving the expediency of administering 
immersion. 

Thus much being premised by way of history of a 
denomination that has no history, inasmuch as it is not 
a denomination but a galaxy of stars each twinkling 
by itself in the dark, I go on to note some of the uses 
and excellences of these numerous Churches, which 
are quite independent of each other and yet happen 
to agree. 

1. The Congregation is the true mother church. 

The Congregation js the raw material out of 

* See pages 29, 30. 



86 INDEPENDENT. 

which all social fabrics are cut; — the great marble 
quarry without which not one ecclesiastical temple 
could ever have been built or ornamented. All 
churches are of necessity Congregational first, 
and afterward whatever they may choose to be. 
In a certain proper sense I may say, too, that all 
churches are even now Congregational churches, 
for they are certainly congregations ; and if I visit any 
congregation and ask among them, Why do you accept 
this prayer-book ? they can give but one answer, — Be- 
cause we prefer it. The preference of the congrega- 
tion settles the constitution of that church. Five 
thousand people gather in St. Patrick's cathedral, or 
hang round its windows like bees about their hives 
in July, a mighty congregation. I question them, one 
by one, Why come you here? With one consent they 
answer, Because we choose to. Let the five thousand 
change their mind and their services shall be no more 
Roman catholic. Thus I say that the Congregation- 
al is the mother church. Older than the Roman, old 
as that first prayer-meeting when the apostles with the 
women met and prayed, and voted, and cast lots, and, 
best of all, received the power of the Holy Ghost. 

2. The christian world owes its theory and practice of 
coniprehe?isive toleration to Baptists and Congrega- 
tionists, — Independents. 



TOLERATION QUESTIONABLE. 87 

There are two sides to this question of general tol- 
eration or freedom of conscience. The old Jewish 
church ought to have tolerated Jesus, whom they mar- 
tyred "ignorantly." " They know not what they do," 
Jesus himself testified. And thus we see that church- 
es, however venerable and divine, are liable to stone 
the messengers and slay the Son of the great King, 
and therefore old churches ought to be tolerant at 
times. 

On the other hand there are acts and evils which 
no church or society should tolerate for a day. The 
Hindoo thug is a murderer ; and even though he may 
reckon murder a religious act, he is not to be tolerated. 
He who kills the body does far less damage than he 
who ruins the soul of man ! If we lay the strong hand 
on thugs, ought we not to suppress infidels who are 
casting souls into hell ? 

Earnest men like Saul find it hard to reconcile sin- 
cerity and toleration. They breathe forth threatening 
and slaughter. They hate the enemies of God with a 
perfect hatred. Better that men die by thousands 
than be damned by millions ! 

Toleration becomes a reasonable doctrine only in 
the light of experience. After centuries of agony in- 
flicted now by one and now by another sincere perse- 
cutor, it has dawned upon men that religious compul- 



88 INDEPENDENT. 

sions, however desirable, are impossible. They defeat 
themselves and are therefore absurd. 

This doctrine of non-compulsion the Independents 
have held from a very early age. In the fourth cen- 
tury we find zealous and persecuted Donatists in 
Africa talking the most advanced nineteenth-century 
doctrine as to civil and religious freedom : " What 
has the emperor to do with the church ? " asked bishop 
Donatus, the purist and protestant, fifteen hundred 
years ago. 

Many of these Independents were, of course, Bap- 
tists. Persecuted christians necessarily become liter- 
alists, i. e. accurate in conforming to the letter of their 
rules, — close copyists of Jesus Christ. Such persons 
will find comfort in multiplying points of literal agree- 
ment between their actions and the actions of Jesus 
Christ. This tendency may become excessive, puerile. 
Men have pleaded for beards, and rejected buttons, 
and curled their hair, and given up houses, refused 
marriage, and run round naked that they might be 
as little children, and other like follies, in their 
desire to be literal followers and imitators of Jesus 
Christ. This tendency to literalism leads to the im- 
mersion of believers as the only Scriptural baptism. 

Here then I note : — 

3. The christia?i church has been incessantly pruned 



CORRUPTIONS INEVITABLE. 89 

and brought back to primitive simplicity and truth by the 
sharp surgery of these Independents again. 

The foundation of christian faith is Jesus Christ, 
Paul says. An imitation of Jesus is the guide for 
christian endeavor. But love is always garlanding 
the beloved. Love is a creator. Love is all the 
time beautifying. The literal imitator of Jesus, if 
not hardened by opposition, will in a very few gen- 
erations outgrow his literalism. The sharp and se- 
vere outlines of truth and duty will be lost sight of 
under ornaments and beautifyings, — additions all. 

This luxuriance, like tropical vegetation, by and by 
becomes a tangle, a mat, a rot, a stink. That which 
in the beginning was an act of grace and love be- 
comes a heavy burden and a superstition. The free 
gifts of gratitude by translation become the extor- 
tions of an avaricious church. Sacraments express- 
ing christian love and hope become acts mystic 
and magical. Priests inveigle victims by performing 
priestly acts, or terrify the dying by withholding them, 
— as if God would ever allow any man to send his 
brother man to heaven or hell ! 

The axe, the bill-hook, and lire can alone clear off 
such snaky swamps and let up a new growth. The 
remedy for the corruption 01 an old church is to go 
back to first principles and develop a new church. 



90 INDEPENDENT. 

Potatoes are propagated by roots, — each year's 
growth is but a continuation of last year's. So, too, 
strawberries are propagated by offsets from the old 
vines. Grapevines are propagated by cuttings, — 
little pieces of the old vines set a growing ; and fruit- 
trees by grafted scions, — old-fashioned, but set on 
new stocks. 

But it sometimes happens that blight or rot or mil- 
dew, or some disease, affects certain stocks. At once 
the cultivator secures health by going back of roots, 
offsets, cuttings and scions, — back to the seed, and 
propagating new generations. Thus have come to 
pass our choicest and healthiest varieties, — seed- 
lings. 

In like manner we find that in all ages when blight, 
corruption, mildew, and death have affected this or 
that great church, earnest men of prayer have natu- 
rally gone back and propagated from the seed ; and 
thus have come to pass new varieties of the old 
things, new samples of the work of the Spirit, re- 
newing the hearts and rearranging the societies of 
men. Baptists and Congregationists, — Indepen- 
dents are these seedling churches, primitive and 
pure. 

4. Congregation came very near to being the most 
obvious church naine in the New Testa?nent. 






CHURCH = CONGREGATION. 91 

Ah me ! and alas ! on what a slender thread hang 
everlasting things! We Congregationists came 
within a hair of having the English Bible all on our 
side, — our Church the only true church. Just think 
of it ! All others dissenters ! But no. King James, 
notwithstanding his puritan training and his presby- 
terian professions in open kirk, in addition to his 
religion professed kingcraft also when he came to the 
throne of England, and sided with " The Church " be- 
cause " The Church " was essential to the throne. And 
so when the Bible was to be revised or re-translated, 
he gave the revisers certain rules, among them this : — 

Rule 3*/. Old ecclesiastical words to be kept ; 
namely, as the word " church " not to be translated 
" congregation. 19 

Think what a different book the New Testament 
would be if, wherever the word "church" now ap- 
pears, the King had only let the translators write 
simply " gathering " or " congregation ! " Think how 
respectable that would have made us at once, to have 
our church order the only Scriptural one ! 

But soberly, both Scripture and common sense de- 
monstrate, as we have seen, that all churches must be 
first Congregational and afterward whatever they 
may chance or choose. The substance of which all 
churches do consist is the congregation. The congre- 



92 INDEPENDENT. 

gation gives them character. I cannot conceive of a 
magnificent regiment in which the officers and men 
are all drunk ; nor of a contemptible regiment in 
which the officers and men are all soldiers and pa- 
triots. It is the congregation that gives character to 
the church, not the church to the congregation. Per- 
ceiving this : — 

5. The Congregational Church can be peculiarly 
catholic and charitable toward other churches. 

Sectarianism, always a blemish, is inexcusable in a 
Congregationist, because his fundamental principle 
is, Let every congregation act its own pleasure, ac- 
countable to God only. 

If, then, any congregation choose to become pres- 
byterian, the Congregationist replies : — Certainly / 
Do as you please. Another congregation prefers meth- 
odism : — Certainly. We do as we like. Let every 
congregation be clearly persuaded i?i its own mind. No 
Congregationist has any business to find fault 
with the action of any other church. What he 
claims for himself he must allow to others, whether 
they allow it to him or not. Being himself utterly 
free, he should allow to all what he claims for himself. 

6. A Congregational Church can act promptly 
and heartily ', not being entangled zvith side interests. 

Great denominations are unwieldy. They cannot 



CAN ACT PROMPTLY. 93 

stop, start, turn out, or change. Indeed, they brag of 
this their bigness. When a man falls overboard, a 
row-boat can reach him quicker than a ship. If an 
emergency arises, a Congregational Church can 
meet it quicker than a great denomination can. For 
great, costly, and lasting works, the great denomina- 
tions are responsible workers. For new, sudden, 
transient duty, the Congregational churches ought 
to be promptly interested. The elephant can push 
off a ship into the water, but cannot catch a mouse ; a 
kitten can catch a mouse, but can launch no ship larger 
than an eggshell. 

All doubtful ventures and experiments should be 
tried by Congregationists first, as little boats go 
ahead of great ships to make soundings and buoy out 
the channel. If the little boat gets sunk on this per- 
ilous errand, the big ship can pick up the swimmers. 
In this same line : — 

7. Congregationism offers few temptations to eccle- 
siasts and church lawyers. 

An ecclesiast is a man who works in and by church 
machinery. He is an official. A christian is a man 
who lives by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and 
does good as he has opportunity, in or out of office. 
The larger the mill, the more wheels and machinists 
are needed. The larger the church, the more eccle- 



94 INDEPENDENT. 

siasts are needed. Church usages, canonical law, 
venerable tradition, will become a lifelong study. A 
man skilled in these things will administer the affairs 
of a denomination. A derangement in one part of 
the great organism may easily jar and set a grinding 
every other part. 

But pure Congregationism has no machinery. 
A question once up is quickly settled. If a Church 
take fire, it is a " detached risk." There is no chance 
for ecclesiastical busybodies to pettifog the Holy 
Ghost out of mind and memory, substituting for his 
blessed inspiration rules and by-laws and precedent. 

8. Congregational Churches caii keep near to 
Scripture with little effort, because they have nothing to 
hamper or prejudice them. 

You have noticed that trees wear, even in old age, 
the warps and scars of their youth. The casualties of 
each year affect the growth of the next. But there are 
some shrubs, like the raspberry and blackberry, that 
every season send up fair shoots from the root, and 
the bruises and frostings of the old stock do not affect 
this new and vigorous growth from the earth. Cut 
away the old wood, and let every year's berry-harvest 
be taken from the last and stoutest growth. 

So should Congregational Churches be in their 
successive generations. Rooted in a scriptural faith, 



EXCELLENT BIBLE-USERS. 95 

each generation should grow up rooted and grounded 
for itself, and not warped or twisted by the sins, 
growths, and strifes of the past. 

Each generation should read and think for itself, 
just as each generation eats and assimilates food for 
itself and makes growth. Religion is a spiritual life. 
It can be propagated, but not bequeathed. Every 
baby must do his own growing, no matter how tall 
his grandfather was ; and every babe in Christ must 
do his own growing, no matter how excellent the 
church nursery and lofty the stature of the " elders." 

It is a peculiar excellence of all true and coura- 
geous Congregational Churches that they need 
have no tradition between them and the Bible, and 
so can and ought to understand Scripture far better 
than other churches. 

I say can and ought to. I do not say that they do. 
For the freedom that permits approach to the gospel 
fountain to drink, every man for himself, is also free- 
dom to wander in desert and stony places, to be cast 
down of devils and fill the darkness with incoherent 
howlings. 

The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will 
he teach his way. 



g6 INDEPENDENT. 

Because, then, an Independent Church is, as we 
have seen, a true congregation, ready to take any 
shape that may be for edification ; — 

And because in its feebleness and necessity it must 
needs preach and practise universal toleration, and 
sometimes attain even unto charity ; — 

And because in its loneliness it is driven into close 
company with the words of Jesus and away from the 
traditions of men ; — 

And because whenever the word " church " occurs 
in the New Testament the well-informed reader sees 
" congregation " shining through ; — 

And because like David, the light-footed and bold, 
the Independent can snatch a sling and call on God, 
and go quickly to slay Goliath ; — 

And because a little Church offers no temptation to 
ecclesiasts and high-priests ; its fury and fights, if 
they come, are but as fire in a detached house ; — 

And because an Independent Church asks for and 
needs no book of guidance but the teachings of Christ 
and the apostles ; — 

And, finally, because an Independent Church may 
take without contradiction, and profit by, whatever good 
is found in any and all other churches ; may prove all 
things and hold fast the good ; may declare fellowship 
with all, and christian love, without any sacrifice of 



A PLEASANT HOME. 97 

consistency or principle ; and may itself become an 
epitome and illustration of all that is good in all the 
rest : — 

Therefore an Independent Church, however insig- 
nificant, seems to me extremely attractive ; a very 
pleasant little tabernacle in which two or three pil- 
grim saints bound for the holy City may meet and 
rest, and talk about the great temple, and the un- 
counted company of the redeemed who shall sing the 
new song there. Their names are already written in 
heaven. 

And as often as they turn aside from their pilgrim 
path on earth, they seek and find in their little taber- 
nacles all that any church on earth can give. For, 

WHERE TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED TOGETHER IN 
MY NAME, Said JeSUS, THERE AM I IN THE MIDST OF 
THEM. 



VI. 



LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 



LECTURE VI. 

LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

OF A TRUTH I PERCEIVE THAT GOD IS NO RESPECTER OF 
PERSONS : BUT IN EVERY NATION, HE THAT FEARETH HIM, AND 
WORKETH RIGHTEOUSNESS, IS ACCEPTED WITH HIM. — Acts X. 
34, 35- 

THE number of Unitarians and Universalists 
in this city (Elmira) is by no means inconsid- 
erable. They are not, however, gathered into any 
one church, but are found among the attendants upon 
all our churches, and wherever found are rendering 
peculiar and important service to the cause of truth 
and religion. 

To indicate and gratefully acknowledge some of 
these services rendered by Unitarians and Univer- 
salists to the cause of christian truth is the intent of 
this lecture. 

A Unitarian is, strictly speaking, one who affirms 
that God is a unit, and a unit only. So Jesus quoted 
to the scribe, — The Lord our God is one Lord; and so 
the scribe unreproved replied, — There is one God, and 
there is none other but hei Accordantly a Unitarian 
denies that the Son and the Holy Ghost are very God. 



102 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

A Universalist is, strictly speaking, one who af- 
firms that all men shall be, sooner or later, saved, — 
not one shall be lost. God, he says, will have all men 
to be saved. In Christ shall all be made alive. Salva- 
tion, safety, is universal, say they, and so they are 
called Universalists. 

But these definitions do not do justice to the people 
who are called Unitarians and Universalists. In- 
deed they find it impossible to describe themselves or 
write their own creed. 

Neither do these two classes of people necessarily 
belong together. Though they agree upon many 
topics, yet the two denominations fuse and flow reluc- 
tantly in one stream, to be called Liberal Christians. 

To one familiar with the history of christian doc- 
trine and the growth of systematic theology, the ex- 
istence and usefulness of Unitarian and Universal- 
ist protestants seem well-nigh inevitable. They must 
needs come to pass. It cannot be otherwise. See ! — 

Men must reason. Men must pry into the unknown. 
Men always believe more than they can prove. If 
they build up from the bottom a substantial temple, 
fact on fact, they are scientific reasoners. If they take 
wing and fly up on high to make discoveries, then they 
are prophetic or poetic reasoners. 

Of course the scientific reasoners are the safer rea- 



SCIENCE VS. THEOLOGY. 103 

soners. If astronomers, for instance, reason aright, 
the punctual planets will prove the reasoning true. If 
they reason erroneously, the stars in their courses will 
fight against them. The safety of scientific reasoning 
is in this fact, that we are compelled to verify our con- 
clusions by new appeals to Nature herself. We can 
build our house very high, but it will surely fall unless 
it be founded upon a rock, and be built up like one 
house of a great block, or one tower of a great temple, 
agreeing in style and strength with the rest of the 
structure. 

But when men have certain great spiritual facts or 
thoughts given to them, relating to beings and worlds 
and experiences unseen yet influential, they' cannot 
help reasoning about them, adjusting them so as to 
show their consistency, or arranging them so as to dis- 
cern their law and gain some momentum or help to- 
ward the computation of truth not yet revealed. 

These reasonings are scientific in their form, but not 
in their substance. When two such reasoners compare 
their views, it is not like the comparison of two as- 
tronomers looking out at the stars, or two chemists re- 
performing the same experiment, or two accountants 
summing again the same stubborn figures. But it is two 
thinkers telling their thoughts, — two dreamers com- 
paring dreams. The stones of which they build their 






104 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

imposing structures are not stubborn facts of the ex- 
ternal or material world ; but are ideas which have no 
existence except in the minds of these "great thinkers.' , 
For the hearer outside, these ideas live in words. But 
what word ever spoken by man is equivalent to the 
idea which he meant to express by it ? These dream- 
ers, therefore, or theologians, are in fact comparing 
words, though they suppose themselves to be compar- 
ing views ; and their structures are built of words ; and 
their reasonings are word-reasonings ; and their strifes 
are "strifes about words." 

In process of time these word-heaps will become so 
vast and high that none but the more learned can 
rightly appreciate their structure. The unlearned have 
neither time nor ability to follow the subtle word-trim- 
ming and word-fittings and so, as common people be- 
lieve an almanac though they cannot compute one, 
the common people of the church believe the creed 
though they cannot build it or prove it. 

Thus the fathers cease from doctrine, i. e. teaching, 
and begin dogma, i. e. assertion, — " the which except 
" every one do keep whole, without doubt he shall perish 
" everlastingly," they pleasantly assure us. 

The only check upon theological rationalism is the 
collision that must come to pass between these ration- 
alizing theologians. But if, unfortunately, any one 



OF THE TRINITY. 105 

phase of rationalism gain the ascendancy over all 
others, so as to be able to destroy or silence the rest, 
then at once this victorious creed becomes the chariot 
of reason run away headlong ; and no man can pre- 
dict to what lengths of essential absurdity, yet verbal 
consistency, the uncontrolled steeds will not go. 

Of these general principles the history of every 
doctrine in the christian church affords illustration. I 
will exhibit two or three. 

1. Of the Tri?tity : — 

Opening the New Testament, we find the words 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We find trinitarian 
proof-texts, and, of course, Unitarian proof-texts 
also. Early christians, receiving the facts of the gos- 
pel, out of warm hearts began their doxologies, in 
which we discern a certain threeness, neither more nor 
less than what we discern in the New Testament. By 
and by some are annoyed by the insult offered to rea- 
son by saying that three are one and that one is three. 
One class will hold fast the intelligible one and ques- 
tion the mysterious three. Another class will hold 
fast the experimental three and question the mysterious 
one. It must needs be, if men reason about God, they 
will become rationalistic Unitarians or else rational- 
istic trinitarians, between whom I know not that there 
is any great choice. 
5* 



106 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

It happened — I say happened — that rationalistic 
trinitarians at one time and another in influential 
councils of the church have out-voted the Unitarians ; 
and so, ages long since, by vote of a majority it was 
settled what was orthodoxy and what was heresy. 
And when trinitarians had purged themselves of all 
Unitarian errors, having turned out the heretics and 
consigned them to a double death, then began a mag- 
nificent riot and runaway of reason, triumphing in 
creed statements, of which common men judged as 
they did of old-fashioned medicines, — the worse the 
taste the better the physic, — the more startling the 
statement and seemingly absurd, the deeper the rea- 
soning that demonstrates it and the piety that accepts 
it without question. Thus dogma took the place of 
doctrine, or, in plain English, assertion took the place 
of teachi?ig. Uncontradicted doctors smote Reason 
in the face in the name of religion. I cannot better 
make you understand these statements than by read- 
ing to you pure and simple what is called the Athana- 
sian creed. 

"Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is 
" necessary that he hold the catholic faith. 

" Which faith except every one do keep whole and 
"undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. 

" And the catholic faith is this : — That we worship 
"one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. 



ATHANASIAN CREED, SO CALLED. 107 

" Neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the 
" substance. 

" For there is one Person of the Father, another of 
" the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. 

" But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of 
" the Holy Ghost, is all one ; the glory equal, the ma- 
"jesty co-eternal. 

" Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is 
"the Holy Ghost. 

" The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the 
" Holy Ghost uncreate. 

" The Father incomprehensible, the Son incompre- 
" hensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. 

" The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy 
" Ghost eternal. 

" And yet they are not three eternals, but one Eter- 
" nal. 

" As also they are not three incomprehensibles, nor 
" three uncreated, but one Uncreated and one Incom- 
prehensible. 

"So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son al- 
" mighty, and the Holy Ghost almighty. 

"And yet there are not three almighties, but one 
" Almighty. 

"So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the 
" Holy Ghost is God. ' 



108 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

" And yet there are not three gods, but one God. 

" So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and 
" the Holy Ghost Lord. 

" And yet not three lords, but one Lord. 

" For like as we are compelled by the christian 
" verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be 
" God and Lord ; so are we forbidden by the catholic 
" religion to say, there be three gods, or three lords. 

" The Father is made of none, neither created nor 
" begotten. 

" The Son is of the Father alone ; not made, nor 
" created, but begotten. 

" The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son ; 
" neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceed- 
ing. 

" So there is one Father, not three fathers ; one 
" Son, not thr,ee sons ; one Holy Ghost, not three holy 
" ghosts. 

"And in this Trinity none is afore or after other ; 
" none is greater or less than another. 

~" But the whole three Persons are co-eternal togeth- 
" er and co-equal. 

" So that in all things as is aforesaid, the Unity in 
" Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. 

" He therefore that will be saved must thus think 
"of the Trinity." 



UNITARIAN VICTORY. IO9 

And yet I venture to say that no unlettered man ever 
did so think of the Trinity ; neither can he so think of 
the Trinity if he try; and he who tries until he seems to 
have succeeded, will probably have so damaged his 
understanding by the effort, as to be saved, not by the 
creed he has swallowed, but because of the compassion 
universally accorded to the feeble-minded, the crazy, 
or the otherwise irresponsible. 

So long as the orthodox church flaunts the Athana- 
sian creed as a banner, so long there will be need of 
opposing ranks to declare the rights of reason and 
of private judgment and well-ordered speech. 

But whenever, as by the episcopal church in this 
country, this creed banner is furled, and warlike trini- 
tarianism ceases its unchristian threat fulness, straight- 
way the errand of Unitarianism in that direction 
ceases ; and we shall find, as we find to-day, conspicu- 
ous Unitarians praying to the Lord Jesus, and con- 
spicuous trinitarians preaching the humanity and 
graces, as well as grace, of Jesus of Nazareth. 

In this so great congregation doubtless more than 
one half of you have never listened to an old-fash- 
ioned trinitarian or Unitarian sermon. You would 
find it hard to believe that such discourses were ever 
written, or, being written, were listened to. But if at 
any time pastors begin to preach the Athanasian 



110 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

creed, depend upon it the Spirit of God will raise up 
equally mistaken Unitarians for their destruction, 
even as in India the devastation of the wild hog is 
something tempered by the ravening tiger. That 
land, however, is most to be desired as a home, which 
is neither cursed by wild hogs nor saved by tigers. 

Against another dogma of rationalizing or system- 
making orthodoxy, Unitarians and Universalists 
equally protest. 

2. Of marts depravity and its origin. 

Every man has found it experimentally true, that, 
when he would do good, evil is present with him. If 
any man say he is without sin, he deceiveth himself. 
We cannot do the things that we would. Death has 
passed upon all men for that all have sinned. Here is 
a universal, experimental truth, common to all religions, 
certified by every intelligent conscience on the globe. 
Here is a fact. Reason begins to inquire as to the 
age of this fact, and the cause of this fact, — the 
dimensions and degree of this depravity. Such in- 
quiries are natural. They are inevitable. 

So will come to pass orthodox reasoners. And 
partly from Scripture and partly from their own deep 
and gloomy consciousness they will develop the doc- 
trine of man's total inability, his utter and entire 
depravity. Being unable to find its beginning in this 



ORIGIN OF EVIL. Ill 

generation, and as little in the one preceding, and so 
back and up the stream of time, they come by a logi- 
cal necessity to the first man. What can they do 
except say that " In Adam's fall we sinned all " ? One 
doctor in one way and another in another will show 
the reasonableness and justness of lodging a whole 
race and its destinies in the loins of one man, and 
making the issue of heaven or hell for inconceivable 
millions of the groaning or rejoicing to depend 
upon the behavior of this one man at one trial or 
test of his virtue. 

Now when men have been promiscuously damned 
for a generation or two, and every priest and every 
preacher has denounced them because of their sin 
(and this they indeed deserve), because of their sin 
not only, but also has called it original sin, — sin that 
was born with them, — sin that came from father 
Adam, — sin that damned them before they were 
born, — sin that compels a million or more of help- 
less heathen to curl in everlasting anguish to every 
one saint that has escaped and attained the heavenly 
felicity ! By and by insulted reason, bruised and sad 
at heart, will hear a strange new melody in the simple 
words spoken a thousand times, — Our Father 
which art in heaven, — and by a blessed insurrec- 
tion will burst the bonds of a long captivity ; will 



112 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

deny with Pelagius that babies are born devils ; deny 
that all men sinned in Adam and are justly con- 
demned for his transgression ; deny that God hates 
men and stands a consuming fire, their most dreadful 
enemy. 

So it will come to pass that the same quality of 
mind that protests against the Athanasian creed in its 
excesses will also protest against the cold, inhuman 
theories as to evil in Adam and the consequent perdi- 
tion of his posterity. 

On a protest like this Unitarians and Univer- 
salists will be in very close sympathy. By and by, 
when these christian brethren have suffered hardness 
as good soldiers a sufficient length of time, the effect 
of their protest will be readily detected in the teach- 
ings and creeds of all the so-called orthodox churches. 
There is not a church in this city, nor a minister of 
the gospel of any creed, who dares to preach, as his 
own faith, any one of a half-dozen sermons on the 
fall in Adam and the imputation of his sin to his pos- 
terity, — sermons of men like Timothy Dwight, or Dr. 
Bellamy, or Dr. Emmons, or Jonathan Edwards. 

But citizens all ! whether orthodox or liberal, re- 
ligious or irreligious, rationalistic or simple-minded in 
your faith, I take you to witness in this hour, that by 
the testimony of your own condemning conscience, 



OF EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. II3 

accusing and not excusing ; by the spectacle of your 
past life and its pathway strewn with broken purposes 
of good ; by the fearfulness of your own thought of 
judgment and exact reckoning with God ; by the 
volume of those many secret thoughts, selfish, sinful, 
unlovely, which you dare not confess to your nearest 
friend : by these resistless evidences and testimonies 
I certify and accuse you that ye are erring sinful men ; 
that we all like lost sheep have gone astray. And 
while I thank Unitarians and Universalists for 
having something humbled the cruel rationalism of 
orthodoxy, and compelled something like meek and 
gentle utterance from the theologians of to-day, 
yet the fact, the gloomy, dreadful fact with which 
these theologians began their reasonings nor Unita- 
rian nor Universalist, alas ! can ever deny or de- 
stroy. No heresy can extirpate sin and death. 

In the same general way rational Universalists 
have been needed as a counterpoise to the rational 
damnationists. Be it always remembered that religion 
is above reason. 

3. Of everlasting punishment : — 

The christian religion has this in common with all 
other religions, that it is a plan of salvation, — a plan 
by which men may escape, or at least hope to escape, 
the evil to come 5 evil which cannot be better ex- 

H 



114 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

pressed than in the words of Scripture, — a fearful 
looking for of judgment to come and fiery indignation. 

Men must reason. They will theorize as to the de- 
tail of this eternal woe. By and by we shall find the 
pious poets of perdition hardening their visions slowly 
into dogmas of damnation. 

Men will become so wonted to a lurid background 
to the gospel picture, that they can with difficulty con- 
ceive of a gospel or a grace of God, if by any chance 
the pit of hell should prove to have a bottom or the 
fires thereof be ever quenched. 

Richard Baxter could not perfect his " Saints Rest? 
except he first depict the sinner's torment. Hear 
him : — 

"The principal author of hell torments is God him- 
" self. As it was no less than God whom the sinner 
" had offended, so it is no less than God who will pun- 
" ish them for their offences. He hath prepared these 
" torments for his enemies." 

" The torments of the damned must be extreme, be- 
" cause they are the effect of divine vengeance. Wrath 
" is terrible, but revenge is implacable. When the great 
"God shall say, 'My rebellious creatures shall now 
"pay for all the abuse of my patience; remember 
" how I waited your leisure in vain, how I stooped to 
" persuade and entreat you. Did you think I would 



BAXTERS POETRY. 115 

" always be so slighted ? ' Then he will be revenged 
" for every abused mercy ! " 

" Consider also that though God had rather men 
" would accept of Christ and mercy, yet when they 
" persist in rebellion, he will take pleasure in their 
" execution." 

" The guilt of their sins will be to damned souls like 
" tinder to gunpowder, to make the flames of hell take 
" hold upon them with fury. The body must also bear 
" its part. That body which was so carefully looked 
" to, so tenderly cherished, so curiously dressed, what 
" must it now endure ? " 

" But the greatest aggravation of these torments 
" will be their eternity. When a thousand millions of 
" ages are past, they are as fresh to begin as the first 
" day. If there were any hope of an end, it would 
" ease the damned to foresee it ; but forever is an intol- 
" erable thought. They were never weary of sinning, 
" nor will God be weary of punishing. They never 
" heartily repented of sin, nor will God repent of their 
" suffering." 

" What if thou shouldst see the devil appear to thee 
" in some terrible shape ! Would not thy heart fail 
" thee and thy hair stand on an end ? And how wilt 
" thou endure to live forever, where thou shalt have no 
" other company but devils and the damned ! " 



Il6 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

That the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ 
is no longer thus represented by christian preachers 
and theological writers, and that the moral sense of all 
who hear these terrible words is shocked at their in- 
humanity, is due in large measure to the determined 
and incessant protest of Universalists. 

Thus as to the Trinity, the origin of evil, and the na- 
ture and duration of eternal punishment, we have no- 
ticed a little in detail the chastening which specula- 
tive and pseudo-scientific orthodoxy has received at 
the hands of protesting Unitarians and Universal- 
ists. In these particulars their work has been a nega- 
tive work, — strong and passionate denial. 

But they have been allowed to afford valuable af- 
firmative contributions also to the general conscious- 
ness of the christian church. Writers like Thomas a 
Kempis have sufficiently developed the mystic and 
passionate sympathy of the christian soul with Christ ; 
but the Christ of Thomas a Kempis and of similar 
writers is not a man pure and simple. And we owe to 
distinctively Unitarian writers the emphatic assertion 
that Jesus was a real man. Ernest Renan, while he 
shocks every christian reader by his scientific incredu- 
lity, his denial of miracles, and his rejection of Christ 
our God, nevertheless profits also every christian 
reader by the breadth and depth and vividness of that 



GOD OUR FATHER. II7 

historic man Jesus of Nazareth. Be it remembered 
always that Jesus was a model man as well as a re- 
vealed God. To deny or forget his humanity is as 
great a loss to the christian as to deny or forget his 
divinity. It is as important to know what manner of 
man we may hope to become as it is to know what 
manner of being God is. 

For wholesome views of what the race of man has 
become by reason of sin, I bid you consult the testi- 
mony of the so-called orthodox. For equally whole- 
some views of what man may become by the grace of 
God, I bid you consult the delineations of Jesus Christ 
furnished to us and to the church of God by the better 
class of Unitarian writers. 

That is a truly christian church in which the mem- 
bers adore the sovereignty of God with Dr. Emmons, 
and walk with Jesus whom Dr. Channing loved but 
feared to worship. 

In like manner of the Universalists I note : — 
The changeless love and fatherhood of God is their con- 
tribution to christian consciousness. 

Many men are timid in giving utterance to this great 
truth, lest they seem to subtract from the justice of 
God as a " righteous moral governor." Having un- 
consciously built up the/law into a pile that overtops 
God himself, theologians unwittingly present us with 



Il8 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

a God who seems in perplexity how to indulge his 
fatherly inclinations without damage to his govern- 
ment. How can he be just and yet justify ? is the ques- 
tion that fills theologians with anxiety. 

The Universalist has reminded us that the father- 
hood of God, and that he has a heart, are truths quite 
as important as the governorship of God and that he 
has a law. The christian truth is that God who was in 
the dying Christ cannot be more emphatically revealed 
than he was then and there, as the great-hearted,* de- 
voted, self-sacrificing, loving Father ; and at the same 
awful moment all may read, too, that the wages of sin 
is death ; sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death, 
and God will by no means clear the guilty. 

At our peril we let go of either truth, — the love of 
God so magnified by the Universalists, or the terror 
of the Lord so incessantly proclaimed by the ortho- 
dox. 

We may notice, too, that these Unitarians and Uni- 
versalists have usually rendered their testimony at con- 
siderable cost to themselves. 

Contrary to what we should expect, magnanimity 
and compassion are not the attributes of God popularly 
acceptable. The masses of men being selfish and in- 
clined to tyrannize, readily accept a tyrannic, passion- 
ate, tormenting God ; for such a God they would 



GENERALLY UNPOPULAR. II9 

themselves be if they had a chance. And although 
one would suppose that men would like to hear the 
sweet-sung prophecies of universal and indiscriminate 
salvation, yet as a matter of fact the priests and 
preachers who scare people, and then admit them to 
safety at a reasonable cost, and by a mode sufficiently 
mysterious, have always been more popular than the 
philosophic and philanthrophic Unitarians and Uni- 

VERSALISTS. 

Whatever of excellence and of credit belongs to 
men who assert unpopular convictions at cost to 
themselves is due to great numbers of Unitarians 
and Universalists. There are regions, of course, such 
as Boston and Cambridge, where scholarly and ration- 
al Unitarianism or Deism is at once an elegant 
speculation and a popular creed. But as a general 
rule these brethren are in a minority ; and when they, 
hold fast their faith, and with reasonable modesty de- 
clare their dissent from prevailing creeds, their courage 
and independent thought are truly excellent ; and 
their chastening effect upon the general christian con- 
sciousness is not less to their credit, in that it has 
been rarely acknowledged and never welcome. 

It will be found, too, that these brethren are pro- 
moters of intelligence and defenders of our public schools 
as being in the7nselves a positive good regardless of a?id 



120 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

separable from religion. They will be found at work 
with the more intelligent of all denominations in every 
enterprise of public spirit and material welfare. 

Being less encumbered with metaphysical theories 
and dogmatic systems than many, they can liberate a 
larger force of money and work and enthusiasm where- 
with to attack and destroy the evils of to-day. These 
brethren will see and declare that to-day is the matrix 
of to-morrow. That this year is mother of next year. 
That our life in the flesh is the germ of our life in the 
spirit, and that he who does the best possible thing for 
to-day is doing also the best possible thing for to-mor- 
row and for all days. Their danger will be of exces- 
sive worldliness, which very tendency is the antidote 
and limit for excessive other worldliness, which is 
superstition. 

Not dreaming that I have anything near exhausted 
my subject, I must nevertheless make an end. 

As in previous lectures of this course, so in this, I 
have carefully abstained from indicating many vital 
points upon which I suppose Unitarians and Uni- 
versalists each in their way have erred from truth, — 
erred as widely as they say that I have. Our differ- 
ences are fundamental. They have been topics of 
controversy between earnest men ever since the 
second century. 



HAS FOUNDATION IN SCRIPTURE. 121 

As a mathematician I shall never attempt to square 
the circle. I shall never again invent perpetual mo- 
tion. These two problems have received sufficient 
attention. For the same reason I here and every- 
where decline to take part in any controversy that for 
sixteen hundred years has attracted earnest minds, 
disputing as to the Godhead, the person of Christ, the 
origin, and term of evil, and the destiny of the human 
race. A controversy that has raged so long is not 
likely ever to come to an end. The problems involved 
are insoluble until, being born again, we see the king- 
dom of God. 

Nay, more. Upon opening the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments a tranquil and contented 
christian cannot fail to perceive that very broad 
and plain testimonies are there given, which at least 
seem to justify the so-called errors of Unitarians and 
Universalists. And I know not in what direction to 
look for an authoritative and final exposition of Script- 
ure. 

So long as they call on God, lifting up holy hands 
without wrath or doubting, and, with me, are prompt 
and heartfull in saying Our Father which art in 
heaven, who am I that I need judge the servant of 
another ? What am I that with condemning zeal I 
should denounce my brethren ? 
6 



122 LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

Without meaning to or needing to surrender one 
point of the faith called orthodox, nor softening one of 
its hard and exact lines of what I call truth, it has 
seemed to me altogether possible that citizens of one 
city and incarnate souls worshiping God in one great 
congregation, differ as they may upon their specula- 
tive and dogmatic systems, may also walk together 
in mutual respect and in co-operations absolute and 
whole-hearted, in whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. 

For, of a truth, I perceive that God is no re- 
specter OF PERSONS I BUT IN EVERY NATION, HE THAT 
FEARETH HIM, AND WORKETH RIGHTEOUSNESS, IS AC- 
CEPTED WITH HIM. 



VII. 

CHOOSING ONE'S CHURCH. 



LECTURE VII. 

CHOOSING ONE'S CHURCH. 

" What shall we then say to these things ? " — Romans 
viii. 31. 

A LECTURE of review and general remark seems 
called for at this point, in order to utilize some 
of the truth which has been gained by the study in 
detail of Our Seven Churches.* 

1. To admit the excellence of Seven different 
Churches, and allow to each of them the title 
" christian " may disturb the faith of some, and 
cause others to fall into indifferentism, if not con- 
tempt for all churches. 

I have seen children whose joy in the possession 
of an apple, an orange, and a stick of candy at a 
picnic was something less because every other boy and 
girl of the Sunday school received a similar gift. 
In like manner some men cannot enjoy their own 
church, unless able to look down upon others and 

* Roman catholic, presbyterian, episcopal, methodist episco- 
pal, baptist, congregational, and liberal christian. 



126 CHOOSING ONE'S CHURCH. 

say, Mine is better than yours. An effort to show that 
all churches are good enfeebles the relish of them who 
enjoy chiefly the conviction that their own church is 
best. 

2. But beside these are many who are endeavoring 
to lead a christian life without any church. Some of 
these go so far as to avow dislike of all churches. 
They declare that, as administered by men and among 
men, churches are so childish, selfish, and corrupt that 
the christian believer would better let them all alone. 
Church organization, say they, is anti-Christ. 

Such should remember the words and the example 
of Jesus Christ: — The scribes and pharisees sit in 
Moses' seat : all therefore whatsoever they bid you 
observe, that observe and do.* And again he told 
the leper whose flesh after years of scab and dry- 
ness had come to him as the flesh of a little child : 
Go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the 
gift that Moses commanded.! Of all churches that 
have blessed or cursed mankind, none has been and 
none can ever be straiter or stronger or more de- 
nominational than this church of Israel ; and, on the 
other hand, of all men that have ever dwelt in 
churches and received benefit, attaining in them a 
spiritual stature that made them superior to all 
* Matt, xxiii. 2, 3. t Matt. viii. 4. 



ALL NEED A CHURCH. 127 

churches, no better sample can be found than Jesus 
of Nazareth in this narrow church of Israel. In 
short, the world's straitest sect and the world's 
broadest man appear in history as mother church 
and dutiful son. 

These precepts and this example of Jesus Christ 
should forever discourage the inclination, too fre- 
quently gratified in these latter days, to break away 
from churches and organizations for the sake of lib- 
erty and spiritual growth. We need to attain to a 
Christ-like reverence for tradition and love of church 
on the one hand, and an equally Christ-like radical- 
ism and independence of thought on the other. 

Churches are related to spiritual development as 
dock-yards are to great ships, that defy the storm, 
because they have been made strong in docks quiet 
as duck-ponds. No ships can be built at sea. But 
for the law, prophets, and church of Israel there had 
been no Simeons, Annas, Elizabeths, nor blessed 
Mary and her Son. Abolish churches, and there 
can be no pious drill, nor propagation of a holy 
seed, nor building up in this world a household of 
faith. Every christian must say to himself: I am 
not come to destroy ', but to fulfil. It is- not my busi- 
ness to find fault with churches and pull them down, 
but rather to strengthen the things that remain and are 



128 CHOOSING ONE'S CHURCH. 

likely to perish. And while I am profiting by my own 
church home, it is good to know that many other 
churches are also enjoying the presence of God, in whom 
all the families of earth are called. 

3. Each one of our Seven Churches of which I 
have spoken claims the name " Christian." Each one 
appeals to Scripture in demonstration of its truth and 
excellence. 

This is very discreditable to the Bible, if the Bible 
was intended as a form-book for the regulation of de- 
tails, dress, and ceremony, or even of dogma among 
God's children. For in these particulars it has failed 
ignominiously. But it is highly creditable to the Bible 
and its many-sidedness, and its deep wells of refresh- 
ment on every side, if we suppose the Bible to be a 
storehouse of God, wherefrom the children of his love 
may draw daily rations of food and drink for souls 
that hunger and thirst after righteousness, each one 
receiving according to his several necessity ; just 
as from that other storehouse of God, the earth, he 
giveth food in every variety, according to the need of 
bird and beast and fish and reptile and of man him- 
self. As a book of ecclesiastical regulations the Bible 
is a failure. As a repast for saints the Bible is a mar- 
velous success. 

And so these Seven Churches all profess them- 



RIVAL CLAIMS CANNOT BE SETTLED. 1 29 

selves christian, and they all love the holy Bible, and 
they all say so, if not wisely, let us at least admit hon- 
estly. And upon earth there is no tribunal before 
which we can send up our church attorneys to show 
their proofs, and plead their causes, and ask for a final 
decree establishing them and their clients as the true 
church of God, — the only one upon earth warranted 
by Scripture. 

Where there is no tribunal there can be no de- 
cision ; and where no decision there can be no end 
to strife, if strife be once begun. Therefore let chris- 
tians cease from controversy ; let nothing be done 
through strife or for vain glory ; but each and every 
church being clearly persuaded in its own mind will, 
in its contentment, attain to silence and dignity and 
magnanimity. Even the ox doth not low over his 
fodder. They that are noisiest in church boastful- 
ness give evidence that they are least at rest. Woe 
unto that servant who, when his Lord cometh, shall 
be found beating, abusing, or accusing his fellow- 
servants ! 

4. A plausible and beautiful theory is entertained 
by some, that these Seven or more differing Churches 
are in fact a device of our Lord by which he is dis- 
tributing the gifts of the Spirit, and making provision 
for the grades and types of spiritual character that he 



130 CHOOSING ONES CHURCH. 

would bring to pass among men. A beautiful theory 
I say. Beyond all question there is need of such grad- 
ings and classifications in the great university of sal- 
vation. If the church of one's childhood insists upon 
statements of truth somewhat strait and hard, either 
the growing man will be pinched, or the church bond 
will be burst, or he must be promoted and enlarged 
in an orderly and regular way. It is pleasant to think 
that these Seven or more Churches are different 
classes of one great church ; and that when a man 
changes his church it is for cause and for good. 

We should avoid the error of the conservative. Says 
he, God is without variableness or shadow of turning. 
Religious truth is God's truth, therefore religion is with- 
out variableness. That alone is true which is old. Here 
is a fallacy. For as the sunrise, and the moon's phases, 
and the tides are facts with the fisher-boy and with 
the astronomer alike, yet the thought of them, and the 
use of them, and the words spoken about them by Sir 
John Herschel and by the sailor in his smack differ 
widely. God, and all things proceeding from him, — 
in a word, truth, — does not change. But a man's ap- 
prehension of truth and his declarations of truth 
change, unless, indeed, a man have stupefied himself 
or been overtaken by spiritual atrophy and death. 

The sacrifice offered by Jesus the Christ of God is a 



GRADED CHURCHES NEEDED. I3I 

fact to the child spell-bound by the crucifixion story, 
and to the thoughtful man, who is questioning about 
the lamb slain from the foundation of the world and 
the doctrine of a universal, an incessant, and a divine 
sacrifice. But the boy and the man will have widely 
differing thoughts and words about this eternal fact of 
sacrifice. 

A full creed for a man and a full creed for a boy 
must needs differ. The church of one's boyhood can- 
not be the church of one's manhood except it be a 
church of grades and classes. Jesus himself classified 
his hearers and spoke differently to different classes. 
In the letters of Paul we find traces of grades and 
classes in the churches to whom he addressed his let- 
ters : — " Ye which are spiritual" he says ; " as many 
as will be perfect" and other phrases of like suggestion. 

In these days of graded schools, it is strange that re- 
ligious instruction should still be given in the clumsy 
and miscellaneous way that used to disgrace our com- 
mon district schools. It were well, therefore, were it 
possible, to have in every church four or five grades or 
classes of religious disciples ; — the catechumens, the 
neophytes, the disciples, the spiritual, and the perfect. 
And as Jesus was able by the indwelling Spirit rightly 
to divide the word of truth, giving a blessing to the 
little children, and the ddep things of God himself to 



132 CHOOSING ONES CHURCH. 

his riper friends, — truths which even they could not 
understand, but had need to wait for the interpretations 
of the Spirit, — so the pastor of a christian church ought 
to be neither a novice, nor a completed man dry and 
inelastic, but like the great Teacher, with easy words 
for children and deep things of God wherewith to as- 
tonish and stagger the most athletic intellect that can 
be found in his flock. 

The next best thing to a graded church is, so the 
theory goes, the incidental gradations and opportuni- 
ties for culture afforded by our Seven or seventeen 
Churches ; and this one benefit compensates in large 
measure for the staring evil and costliness of our sec- 
tarian divisions. 

Perhaps there is a little truth in this. Let us hope 
that more souls are fed, and well fed, by our many 
churches, than could be fed by one catholic church. 
But I am not able to verify this theory in any con- 
siderable detail. We cannot classify existing denomi- 
nations. We cannot decide that this one is an infant- 
school, and that secondary, a third grammar, and a 
fourth academic. Our churches as a general thing 
would rather be ungraded, clumsy district-schools with 
one algebra scholar on exhibition, than populous, use- 
ful infant-schools, where all are simple, child-like, and 
all are growing. 



CHURCHES GROW MUCH ALIKE. 1 33 

The beautiful theory aforesaid breaks down igno- 
miniously when we inspect the churches in this land 
of voluntaryism. For as pebbles that lie along the 
level seashore tend more and more toward one shape 
and lose their angularity, so in any democratic society 
the tendency is toward a loss of singularity among 
men, and a reduction of people by ceaseless attrition, 
and a general enslavement to public opinion, to a 
cornerless and meaningless average. In other words, 
dress, character, religion, politics, are not shaped ac- 
cording to any predetermined standard or pattern ; 
but they come to pass. Men take shape and build 
up society pretty much as pebbles do gravel-banks. 

Thus it has come to pass in at least five out of Our 
Seven Churches, that, except on rare occasions, a 
visitor has need to ask at the close of public w r orship 
the name of the church that has made him welcome. 
And all that saves the other two churches from a like 
uniformity is the necessity in one of clinging to a 
liturgy, and in the other of holding fast to a dead lan- 
guage. Even in these (I allude, of course, to the 
episcopal and Roman catholic), if any one enter and 
stay for a few months he will be surprised to find how 
much they have absorbed from the democracy and 
voluntaryism of the American atmosphere, and con- 
sequently how much they nave in common with all the 



134 CHOOSING ONES CHURCH. 

churches which are superficially called dissenting. 
There are many churches but one religion. 

I reject as untenable the theory that our many 
churches are profitable because of any considerable 
diversity of spiritual gifts, and will note : — 

5. The considerations which are usually influential 
in settling a man's church connections. 

Few men have asked, and fewer still have truly an- 
swered, the question, Why am I a member of this 
Church ? Comparatively few church-members can 
give a statement of the few points at which they differ 
from churches of other names. If, then, they cannot 
tell what are the peculiarities of their own church, it is 
self-evident that they have not chosen the church on 
account of those peculiarities. 

(a) More than half of our people are where they are 
by inheritance. They love the faith of their parents 
and cling to the church of their childhood. I was 
born and bred a methodist, sir ! Very good. It is 
much to your credit to live and die a methodist if you 
are a growing methodist. For, as we have seen,* the 
methodist is a grand man-reforming and soul-reviving 
church ; and to honor one's father and mother, and 
hold fast the faith and forms received from them, is 
beyond question a graceful and an ennobling trait. 
* See Lecture IV. 



THE CHURCH IN WHICH CONVERTED. 1 35 

Furthermore, in case of all backsliders and wander- 
ers from the ways of piety, they will ordinarily find 
that for the renewal of spiritual life they must begin 
where they left off. They must go back through the 
same gap by which they broke out. They must feed 
again in the pastures of their childhood. No man 
should be ashamed to give this as the reason of his 
church preference. That which I received of my 
parents I shall prize so long as I live, and shall hand 
down to my children unimpaired. 

(l>) Next we have the class who hold fast to the 
church in which they experienced religion. If there 
is a revival in the baptist church, by a law of innocent 
gregariousness the larger part of the converts will be 
buried with Christ in baptism. Just such persons, if 
converted by the same Spirit in the methodist church, 
will naturally and innocently be distributed into classes, 
and be content with having their hearts sprinkled from 
an evil conscience, and their bodies washed with pure 
water according to necessities oft recurring. 

This law of loving adherence to the church with 
which we experienced religious quickening extends 
even beyond persons and doctrines, and lays hold 
upon meeting-houses and architectural monstrosities. 
In the far West, when christians meet and plan to- 
gether to build a meeting-house, it will be found that 



I36 CHOOSING ONE'S CHURCH. 

some are asking for a room of this or that pattern, 
and when they cannot all be gratified, the thoughtful 
among them will begin to see that each has been ask- 
ing for a rebuilding of the place where he first gave 
his heart to God. Indeed, there is no other way of 
making meeting-houses memorable in beauty except 
this of meeting God therein. 

(c) Others still are led into the church where they 
found a husband or a wife. 

For as all sins are of kin, and visit men in company 
to curse them, so all the nobler passions of the soul 
are of heavenly race, and visit the pious and prayer- 
ful as the angels whom Jacob saw ascending and 
descending to bless the earth with gifts from heaven. 
They who purely and truly love, and ask of God a 
blessing upon their marriage vow, are quickened 
throughout their entire nature, and, as never before, 
are facile to religious influence and noble in their 
aspirations. 

By a law of natural arrangement the two will go 
together into the church where either one is decisively 
at home. Statute law says, Let the wife follow the 
husband, for he is the head. Spiritual law says, Let 
these two go together to find a home ; and so there are 
blessed thousands who are in the church of their 
choice because they married into it. 



CONGENIAL SOCIETY DESIRABLE. 1 37 

It is both wise and honorable to love a church for 
either one of these considerations : Because it is the 
church of our childhood ; because it is the church 
where we found the Lord ; or the church into which 
we entered at our marriage. 

There are many other considerations of less dignity, 
but still quite innocent, which it is no disgrace to a 
man to obey, and admit that he has obeyed them. 
For instance : — 

(d) A man would better join a church where he is 
not irritated or offended by uncongenial habits, dress, 
or manners, than one where he is so offended. All 
churches in a city have a certain social status. A 
man does well not to run a tilt against the inexorable 
stratifyings of society which, when -pervaded by love, 
are the heavenly orders and degrees of the kingdom f 
but when they are the rankings of self-love are no 
less inexorable, even though they be the ranks of 
hateful and envious men striving for masteries. 

If any person feels ill at ease, annoyed, irritated, 
crossed, by social influences in the church of his 
choice, he does well to move out, and go to some 
other church where he can be at rest, just as sick 
folks leave New York and go to Florida. They mean 
no scorn of New York, they do not boast of Florida. 
They want to quit coughmg. There is no question of 



I38 CHOOSING ONE'S CHURCH. 

principle involved in a change of one's church connec- 
tion. Churches, like the sabbath, were made for man, 
not man for churches. The old style congregationist 
of New England naturally becomes a presbyterian in 
Philadelphia. A man belonging to a genteel church 
in Boston, when he emigrates, will naturally join a 
genteel church in St. Louis, rather than a church of 
the same denominational name. 

While all this is so, it should be the endeavor of 
every christian, in whatever church he is, to do his 
best to enlarge the genius and hospitality of that 
church, and make it a pleasant home for people of 
other ranks and grades and tastes beside his own. 
He will endeavor to become more and more compre- 
hensive himself, — able to enjoy more and more sorts 
"of people, and by his example lead others to this 
Christ-like faculty. Our Lord was at home with all 
classes. But while growing towards this stature of 
perfect men in Christ Jesus it is not wrong, but, on the 
other hand, altogether wise and proper, for people to 
obey their social instincts in the choice of their church. 
Let churches be gathered and compacted by elective 
affinities, and let no man be ashamed of it. 

(e) Neither should men be ashamed to acknowledge 
that they go to this or that church for honest secular 
or pecuniary considerations. 



CHOOSING FOR SAKE OF PAY. 1 39 

It is no disgrace to a young doctor to look around 
and, finding that all churches save one have four doc- 
tors each, to say, I'll join the church where there are 
no doctors. It will benefit my practice. 

Among the early methodists it was a part of their 
church covenant to help each other in business, — 
buy and sell one to another rather than to outsiders. 
In this respect they put in practice the precepts of 
Paul the apostle : Let us do good unto all, especially 
unto them who are of the household of faith. 

Therefore it is not a discredit to a man, providing he 
has sought first the kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness, to select, from among seven good churches, 
that one for his home in which he can make the most 
money. But mark! It is a sin, if a man has been 
determined in his choice by these secular considera- 
tions, to then stand up in or out of the church as a 
church champion, ready to enter into league offensive 
and defensive, and fight the battles of the sect, when 
in fact he cared nothing for the sect, but looked only 
to his own profit in making his home with them. 
This is my proposition : If a man loves all the churches, 
then it is proper for him to live with that church in 
which he can earn the most by doing the most. 

(J) A church may be gathered and held together 
by personal regard for the pastor. This, though a 



140 CHOOSING ONES CHURCH. 

slender, is yet a perfectly innocent and sometimes 
a profitable and permanent tie. A christian will be 
on his guard lest he be mistaking pleasing excitement 
for the real food of sound doctrine. But when he is 
thus careful, and is certain in his own soul that he is 
fed with milk and strong meat both by this or that 
preacher, it becomes at once his duty to go and join 
the church where he can be fed ; in so doing he stands 
approved in his own conscience and before God. 
This style of church is more frequent in these days 
now passing than at any former time, and it is often 
blasphemed ungenerously. But as in our great cities 
there are families that have learned to keep house 
and to perfect a home who nevertheless send out to 
the city kitchen to obtain their food from absolute 
strangers, so it is quite possible for a man to perfect 
his family as a little church or to be gathered with 
others into a congenial " set " or society, and yet go 
away from them every Sunday, and every lecture-day, 
to get the religious food which he finds most nutritious 
for himself and for his. There are a great many who 
make our conspicuous churches populous, who have not 
really chosen a church, but only chosen a preacher. 

I cannot stay to specify any more of the consider- 
ations usually undeclared, which control men in the 
choice of their church. I am safe in saying that not 






IN WHATEVER CHURCH, CONTENT. 141 

two men in a hundred are related to the church of 
their choice because of any clear, intelligent, or rational 
estimate of her claims as being exclusively the church 
of God. Of the millions who make the Roman catho- 
lic church so blessedly populous, not one in a thou- 
sand can defend the church of his choice by any in- 
telligent marshalling of her claims. It is the church of 
his fathers. It is holy mother church. In a less de- 
gree, the same is true of members of all our churches. 
Since, then, in their practical administration, all 
churches are so much alike, and since so very few 
of the members of any church are able to explain or 
justify the church in which they have their home, it 
follows that any discussion or strife between churches, 
any comparison of their claims, any boastfulness or 
rivalry between them, are unwise, unreasonable, and 
to be abjured. It is a blessed thing to be gathered 
into any church. It is a cursed thing, having been 
gathered in, to blaspheme the dwelling-place of other 
saints. A church however good, however founded by 
the law and upon the word of God, if it be indwelt by 
a spirit contentious and uncharitable, ceases to be a 
church of Christ, as the Tuileries ceased to be a royal 
residence when the sans culotte went raging through 
the halls and pictured galleries, foaming with blas- 
phemy and athirst for blood. 



142 CHOOSING ONES CHURCH. 

In choosing a church, therefore, far more depends 
upon the temper with which we go forth to seek, 
than upon the church in which at last we come to 
rest. 

A man who would find a church that shall profit 
him should, first of all, emancipate himself from slav- 
ery to names. In this age and in this land, names 
of churches have ceased to describe them with any 
accuracy. Then, hungering and thirsting after right- 
eousness and christian grace, let the seeker visit every 
church within his reach, preparing himself by prayer 
and by self-abasement ; rendering to each at every 
visit his full contribution of money, sympathy, and 
prayer, let him sit and share in the services not as a 
critic, still less as a censor. 

When thus he has tried all churches within his reach, 
then let him come back to any one that may seem 
best for him, and ask for the lowest place among its 
members. As he enters in and is enrolled let him 
say to every one that asks : — I cannot tell whether 
this be the best church in the world, still less whether 
it be the true church. Of one thing only I am certain, 
that it is the best church for me. In it I am as nearly 
contented as a partly sanctified man can be this side the 
general assembly and church of the first-born whose 
names are written in heaven. 



VIII. 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 



LECTURE VIII. 

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

" I SPEAK CONCERNING CHRIST AND THE CHURCH." — 
Ephesians v. 32. 

WE find among men bodies of christian believ- 
ers who claim to be this Church of Christ, 
and to derive peculiar and exclusive grace from him 
the head. If, then, there be five or fifty of these sepa- 
rate bodies, and each body claims to be the one true 
and only Church of Christ, the conflict of these 
claims shows that a majority of the men who claim to 
have found the Church of Christ on earth are mis- 
taken. 

In contrast with this confusion, notice the precision 
and unity with which Jews can point out from their 
Scriptures the origin of their church, which was, no 
doubt, the visible church of God. A mere boy can find 
in the Old Testament the call of Abraham ; the cove- 
nant with his seed ; the deliverance of the people from 
slavery in Egypt ; their equipment as a church and 
nation under Aaron /and Moses. Every reader sees 
7 J 



I46 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

at a glance that the service of the sanctuary belongs 
to the tribe of Levi ; the priesthood is in the line of 
Aaron • and so on to the uttermost detail of sacrifice 
and ceremony. 

How different the result when we go with christian 
believers to inquire of the New Testament w r hich one 
of many corporations is the Church of Christ ! A 
man w T ho asks this question is in danger of being 
buried alive by the storm of replies that come whirl- 
ing in on him from every quarter of contradiction. 

In other words, when God undertook to found a 
visible Jewish church, he as usual succeeded, and 
made himself understood. I therefore conclude that 
since he has not made himself well understood in 
the matter of a visible christian church, he has not 
intended to found one upon earth. 

Jesus seems to have taught this as he sat by the 
well of Samaria and said : — The hour cometh when ye 
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, 
worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what : 
we know what we worship : for salvation is of the 
Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true 
worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in 
truth : for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 
God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must wor- 
ship him in spirit and in truth. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST UNLIKE ISRAEL. I47 

Here we have the contrast between the visible 
church of Israel and the invisible Church of Christ. 
Israel a gathered and visible corporation with " ordi- 
nances of divine service," " an earthly sanctuary," a 
tabernacle and its furniture, ordained priests and their 
duty, a high -priest and his sole function ; by which 
splendid apparatus the Holy Ghost prophesied con- 
cerning the holiest of all, into which the way was not 
manifest while the tabernacle and temple were yet 
standing. 

In contrast with this, the Church of Christ is a 
corporation not yet gathered; without ordinances, 
without an earthly sanctuary, without a tabernacle, 
without ordained priests, without a high -priest on 
earth. It is the whole company of them who, being 
quickened by the Holy Ghost, do ever worship God in 
spirit and in truth. And as pilgrims of old came from 
all lands to worship in Jerusalem, a city beautiful for 
situation, the joy of the whole earth ; so these spirit- 
ual worshipers from every land are journeying as pil- 
grims to the New Jerusalem, to the temple whose 
glory shall never pass away. 

The first questions that bred strife in the apostolic 
churches handled this very matter of form versus 
spirit. Well-meaning, conscientious, pious Jews, hav- 
ing received in full' volume the benefit of an estab- 



I48 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

lished church, followed in the footsteps of the apostle 
Paul, and were full of anxiety because of the new and 
disorderly little societies, that had no rules and by-laws, 
nor any guidance except the guidance of the Holy 
Ghost. Here is the exact spot at which the christian 
church takes its departure from the Jewish church 
not only, but from all other visible churches as well. 
In Christ Jesus neither ceremony nor lack of cere- 
mony profits, but a new creature. 

It must needs be, however, that christian men will 
be drawn together by their affinities; and as they 
dwell together will take on habits ; and all these habits 
of associated christians are good if caused by a 
christian spirit, and if they increase the same ; and all 
these habits are bad if they be a mere legacy of an- 
cestral usage, neither proceeding from nor quickening 
the spirit of the children. 

All churches of Christ, so called by men, have 
in their membership more or less christians ; and 
these christians in every church are members elect of 
Christ's Church. By their graces and goodness the 
churches to which they belong are beautified and made 
of good repute. These true christians are found in 
their churches as gold is found in its veins. Men nat- 
urally look in quartz veins to find gold and in churches 
to find christians. They are found there in greater 



HOW TO AVOID ARROGANCE. I49 

abundance than elsewhere. But still there is more 
quartz than gold in our gold veins, and it may be that 
many are called and few are chosen in our churches. 
Gold is found, too, in river-beds, apart from any vein, 
like those rare but royal christians, who, without 
church help, are mingling with men, all uncorroded, 
clean, and shining, like gold grains in the sand. 

Jesus has taught us that the kingdom of heaven is 
as a net cast into the sea, bringing all manner of fish 
unto the shore. Great churches seem to me great nets, 
small churches small nets ; and until these gospel fish- 
eries are over and ended, and their proceeds assorted, 
it will not be known which one of our many denomi- 
nations called christian comes nearest to deserving the 
title. 

And here we may see how unfortunate it is for any 
denomination or church to claim to be exclusively The 
Church of Christ. Not injurious to others but un- 
fortunate for herself. Of course any church or de- 
nomination may call itself the church of Christ, — 
"The" instead of "A" church of Christ.- But in 
one of two ways this mistake will work a great sorrow. 
For a man must either : — (a) Stultify himself by 
saying in one breath, — Mine is the true church, but still 
I am not a bigot and other churches are Just as good, 
which is sheer stupidity, or else : — (b) He must 



I50 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

firmly and consistently declare the perdition of all men 
who do not belong to his chosen church. What can 
be more self-satisfied, not to say conceited and arro- 
gant,* than to count up the members of one's own de- 
nomination, a little company at largest, little as com- 
pared with the whole race of man, and say of this 
mere handful, — These and these only God loves. For 
all the other ?nillions he hath prepared the furnace and 
the fir el 

To avoid this collision between one's reason and 
one's religion, it is only necessary to accept the New 
Testament doctrine as to the Church of Christ and 
the kingdom of God. That there is not upon earth a 
visible, corporate Church of Christ with headquar- 
ters in Jerusalem or Samaria, Rome or Moscow, Pekin 
or Salt Lake City. There are, thank God, millions 
of unmistakable christians in the world, but not one 
church that can claim for herself as a corporation any 
pre-eminence or special title to the name christian. 
The primary import of the word " church " is assembly \ 
company, congregation. And as deserts take their color 
from the color of each grain of sand, so churches 
take their quality and derive their right to the name 
christian from the quality of the members. An as- 
sembly of christians is a christian church, no matter 

* But still consistent, see pp. 9, 10, supra. 



MAN NEEDS A CATHOLIC CHURCH. 15 1 

how organized. An assembly of robbers is a thieving 
church. An assembly of firemen is a fireman's church. 

And any assembly, for whatever purpose organized, 
the moment its members receive the Spirit and graces 
of Christ, becomes by that blessed receiving a christian 
church. And on the other hand there is no church 
known among men, however apostolic in origin and 
venerable by reason of age, but becomes at once anti- 
christian and evil the moment that its members cease 
to be temples of the Holy Ghost 

We thus conclude that there are many churches or 
assemblies of christians upon earth and among men, 
but no one great universal Church of Christ. And 
yet : — 

2. Man needs a universal or catholic church. 

Men taken one by one are insignificant. Men when 
united are capable of greatness and achievement quite 
inconceivable. The history of human progress is 
therefore a history of successful association. On the 
other hand, the history of human disaster is a history 
of collisions, by which associations or nations have 
been broken up in mid-voyage, and, foundering, have 
gone under. 

You will notice, too, that the men in history who seem 
to have been leaders, heroes, or demigods are great 
rather by their position than in themselves. They are 



152 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

the tips of great pyramids, — the most conspicuous 
stone of the heap because lifted up by all the other 
stones that underlie them in useful obscurity. Or, 
changing the figure, as the South-sea surf-rider keeps 
his little float underneath him and neither behind nor 
ahead of the rushing wave, and so doing seems to be 
master of the wave, of which he is in fact a most obse- 
quious servant ; so of prelates in the church, and gen- 
erals in armies, and potentates on thrones, and presi- 
dents in republics, they owe what they have of reputed 
greatness to their ability to top the wave of people 
who are moving obedient to what is called the ten- 
dency of the times. 

Forces among men are social forces, not individual 
forces. Compulsions are social compulsions, not in- 
dividual. Achievements are social, not individual. As 
was said in the beginning by the Lord himself: — This 
people is one. They have all one language. Noth- 
ing will be restrained from them which they have im- 
agined to do. 

Because man gains so much by working with his 
fellow-man, and loses so much by quarrelings and di- 
visions, the dream of philanthropists in all ages has 
been to perfect society and make it endure. Such 
men feel and say that the welfare of one man and the 
welfare of all men should not conflict ; that the need 



SOCIALISTIC FAILURES 153 

of the race is rightly organized society ; that social 
wrong is the fecund parent of personal sin ; and that 
society as a whole, as it has been the cause, should 
become the cure, of the woes that afflict men. 

Some with one theory and some with another, some 
in one land and some in another, are ever working to 
solve the same problem, — to build society so justly 
that the building shall not fall. They believe in 
man. They " have high hopes for humanity/' 

These philosophers and philanthropists fail so uni- 
formly that many men are ashamed to acknowledge 
that they are interested in any such social questions. 
Many men are ashamed to be called socialists. And 
yet Jesus Christ was the most radical socialist that 
ever lived. That they all may be one, is the end and 
aim of his entire undertaking. He differs from the 
Babel-builders called socialists among men in just 
this : — He undertakes at the outset to renew the 
character and temper of each member of his pro- 
posed society. Or, using the apostle's metaphor, he 
shapes one by one the " living stones " of his temple, 
and when all are at last prepared he proposes to lay 
them up according to a divine pattern. 

Other socialists set the blind to lead the blind ; 
balance one wrong by another wrong ; and try to com- 
pact in one society merf whose only agreement is their 



154 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

discontent. Jesus Christ, in contrast, begins with one 
general condemnation of all men. He declares that 
the first step toward the kingdom of heaven — that is, 
eternal society — must be a renewed heart in each 
member ; and he gives himself to this work by a 
magnificent sacrifice of himself. He lays aside his 
glory and God-hood to offer himself at once a ransom 
and an inspiration for a mighty multitude of men, — 
men who at his call deny themselves and, bearing a 
cross daily, walk in the footsteps of God manifest. 

By and by these renewed, transformed, regenerated 
sons of men shall come for the first time to such 
quality and stature that they can be put together and 
kept together in one body, without fault, or flaw, or 
fear of schism. A glorious church, not having spot, 
or wrinkle, or any such thing. 

Because man cannot renew his own heart nor the 
heart of his neighbor, therefore man cannot gather 
nor govern a church universal. Because God can 
renew the hearts of men, purging away the last trace 
of selfishness and taint of sin, therefore God can 
gather and govern a church universal. And, blessed 
be his name, God will gather such a church, and the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against her. Upon her 
glory shall come no dimness and to her greatness no 
reduction. 



i 



THE SOVEREIGN CHOICE OF GOD. 155 

3. God will yet gather and perfect this Grand Society 
of which all i/i£ prophets have spoken since the world began. 

It is for this special work that Jesus has been set 
apart, — the Christ of God, to rule over things in 
heaven, in earth, and under the earth. 

Be it remembered that this Church of Christ is 
a company or society, chosen and gathered by him 
according to his own sovereign choice. We may or 
may not understand the reasons that influence him in 
his choice. Who hath known the mind of God ? 

Be it remembered, too, that men are taught all 
things concerning Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, the 
Comforter. Remember also that this divine Teacher 
proceeding from the Father and Son has not put him- 
self, that we know of, under guardianship of any man 
or church of men. He has no business agent to 
make appointments for him. He inspires whom he 
will. Ye hear the sound of him, but ye cannot tell 
whence he cometh nor whither he goeth. So is every 
one that is born of the Spirit. In other words, each 
member of the Church of Christ, being effectually 
called and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, is thus a dis- 
tinct and separate work of God. No church of men 
can at all better his credentials, and no church can 
separate him from the love of God that is in and 
through Jesus Christ the Lord. 



156 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

I note with repetitious emphasis that God has 
intrusted all choice and judgment to his son Jesus 
Christ, and all effective instruction to the Holy Ghost. 
Therefore let no man pretend to say how many or 
how few are to be gathered into this Church of 
Christ. 

Beyond all question, the ever-blessed Trinity is 
working with power in the lines and with the ap- 
paratus of "evangelic churches," as we call them. 
But is there no residue of the Spirit ? Must we refuse 
to hope that, in ways and by instruments beyond all 
that we can even think, God is working, in every land, 
among them who fear him and are working righteous- 
ness ? 

My brethren, I come to you with a very high argu- 
ment, an argument that moderates alike the pre- 
sumption and the despair of men. 

To you that are cast down because preaching seems 
powerless, revivals rare, and churches thinly peopled, 
I come saying, God is able of these stones to raise 
up members for his intended Church. The word 
of God goes sounding round the globe, a daily 
tide proceeding forth from him as sunlight from the 
sun, and nothing is hid from the power of it. The 
work of God the Holy Ghost is and always was 
beyond all that we can understand or measure. And 



THE SURPASSING GLORY OF GOD. 1 57 

so this great work of gathering up and perfecting a 
mighty Church, bright as the sun and fair as the moon, 
is from beginning to end, from first to last, God's 
work, Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in 
God. All things are working together for good unto 
them who love God, unto them who are called ac- 
cording to his promise. 

On the other hand ecclesiastical pride and presump- 
tion are humbled by this doctrine. The works of man 
when contrasted with nature and tested by her forces 
shrink up and are as nothing. How atom-like the 
hugest ship that ever floated, when the storm is 
abroad, and the dark places of the great deep are 
revealed ! How like chaff the works of men are 
scattered and driven by the tornado ! How worth- 
less a great city swept by an enraged river or shaken 
by a ten-seconds earthquake ! People who dwell 
along the earthquake belts make no large attainment 
in economic art. Their houses are one story, cheap, 
elastic. They live in the shadow of danger, the fear 
of death. Face to face with nature in her destruc- 
tive mood, they never forget their own feebleness. 
They cannot. Their fear breeds thoughtfulness, or 
at least superstition. 

Now these forces of nature are but feeble types of 
God's greatness and energy, — his power to destroy. 



I58 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

Heaven is his throne, earth his footstool. He 
speaks and the mountains melt, or timid flee and 
are lost in the deep. He makes the winds his mes- 
sengers. He sends forth the lightnings as angels — 
they gleam as they go. There is none like unto our 
God. To know him is to fear him. O come, let us 
worship and bow down, and kneel before the Lord our 
Maker. 

Of God thus revealed I am saying, that of his own 
will he has chosen to gather a mighty multitude whose 
beginnings were in the flesh ; — to gather and perfect 
them one by one, and all in one, till they shall be- 
come, by his power working in them, one Body so 
penetrated and possessed by his Spirit that it shall 
be accepted into the Godhead ; and, through espousal 
with the Son, be one with Him, and with the Father, 
and with the Holy Ghost. Having this purpose, con- 
ceived in wisdom, quickened by love, made possible 
by unbounded power, God himself warrants its con- 
summation. No man can add to the number of the 
elect. No archangel, glorified or damned, can take 
away one atom from this eternal crystal. It is the 
Church of Christ which he hath redeemed to him- 
self out of all lands and every nation, and through all 
ages. 

Now, brethren, I protest that no man can really 



WHO ARE MEMBERS OF IT. 



159 



believe in this Holy Catholic Church, and ever 
again be much uplifted in contemplation of that lit- 
tle church of his choice here among men, be the 
same what we call large like Rome, or small like 
the last quaker first-day-meeting. No man can have 
been caught up by the Holy Ghost until he truly and 
thrillingly believes in the Holy Catholic Church, 
and ever afterward find much to boast of, and far 
less to fear, in connection with those pleasant little 
companies of men in uniform, who call themselves 
the Church of Christ on earth. This high argu- 
ment as to the Holy Catholic Church is thus, as we 
said, strength to the feeble-minded, .joy to the poor 
in spirit, comfort to the mourning ; and, on the other 
hand, it brings chastening to the pomp and pride of 
prelacy, and gives meaning to the apostle's word : — 
Brethren, give diligence to make your calling and 
election sure. It is God that worketh in you to 
will and to do of his good pleasure. 

4. Who are members of this Church of Christ ? 

If an artillery officer were to order a private in his 
command to pile a thousand cannon-balls in a solid 
pile, without any spaces between them, the private, 
however humble, would be able at once to see and 
to say, It can't be done, sir ! 

But if, in contrast, a mister mason should take a 



l60 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

workman out upon a lot and show him a thousand 
hewn stone, no two alike, and not one complete in 
itself, and should say, These are to be laid up into a 
house, the workman could at once see and feel that 
the thing is not only possible, but probable. 

In like manner, of certain classes of men, the hum- 
blest intelligence can perceive that being round and 
hard and self-centred, complete in their own pleas- 
ures, they cannot, by any possibility, be wrought into 
a social body. On the other hand, there are qualities 
of mind and character, in a word "gifts" so desirable 
and yet so various, distributed among men, that it is 
plain at a glance, that, whether we can organize them 
or not, they were made to be organized. In short, of 
certain men it can be clearly seen that they are not, 
and cannot be, of the Church of Christ ; while of 
others it can be seen clearly that they are fitted for 
special places in some society — a church of some 
sort, whether of Christ or not is a further question. 

Suppose, next, that our master mason is himself led 
forth by an architect, who carries with him drawings 
of a proposed building ; and they two go a-fleld among 
the hewn stones,, to see whether they can pick out 
from among these curiously shaped fragments suit- 
able pieces to build the house which the architect 
has planned. As the plans are 'unrolled and the 



THREE CLASSES OF MEN. l6l 

mason looks them over, he says naturally, Good sir, 
it will cost less to hew new stones, a?id shape them 
so as to agree with your plans, than it will to pick 
out and fix over these that ai'e already shaped for 
other plans. Htre are unhewn blocks ready to take any 
shape. 

By these illustrations I set forth that there are 
three classes of men. (a) Self-centred men, who 
can touch but never be united with others, (b) The 
shaped and fitted for societies and partnerships that 
have already existed, being filled with love of church 
or love of country, or pride of race or family. And 
(c) Men who have refused to be conformed to the 
requirements of this world's prosperity, and who by 
every act declare that they wish to be shaped, so as 
to become fitted members of a society 7 yet to be gath- 
ered. 

The Church of Christ, when gathered and per- 
fected, will be found to consist largely of men from 
this last class, — men who have no love for them- 
selves and who have not been conformed to the 
principles or societies of this present world. 

Whether any of the first two classes will have place 
in the Church of Christ is more than we can fore- 
see. Paul indicates that there are likely to be wise 
master-builders who upon the foundation Jesus Christ 

K 



1 62 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

will build gold, silver, and precious stones. There are 
to be little societies, blessed christian families, hum- 
ble, simple christian churches, that so dwell together 
in faith and hope and love, that the members are 
really shaped according to a heavenly pattern al- 
ready. The kingdom of heaven is come and the 
will of God is done in earth as in heaven. Just 
where or how many of these blessed societies are 
to be found among men we cannot say. Happy are 
they who, before their translation, have a foretaste of 
the heavenly unity, and who know for certain that 
having dwelt in love upon earth, they are about to 
dwell in God forever. 

But beside these who receive a heavenly shaping are 
great multitudes in and around our churches who are 
shaped by anti-Christ. Upon them usages and tricks 
of will-worship are stamped by a weight of supersti- 
tion and conformity. Devotees are squeezed out of 
shape, into a shapely unity, like figs in their drum or 
raisins in «. box. The package is shapely, but the 
fruits that are packed have lost all" beauty. To what 
extent these devotees can be unpacked and restored 
to. their original grace is more than I can say. 

There are great multitudes who are fairly represented 
by unhewn stone waiting the fashioning hand of the 
skilful workman. Great numbers of men in and 



THE LAST WHO SHALL BE FIRST. 1 63 

around our churches, upon whose spirit has been im- 
pressed the fear of God which is the beginning of 
wisdom. They have been so possessed by this one 
salutary truth that they have ceased from man ; have 
ceased from their own ways and works ; have passed 
all their days in patience, and in innocence, and in wait- 
ing for somewhat that they could not describe. Not 
seeing, they yet believe. These are the poor in spirit 
of whom Jesus said —Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
These are the publicans who at the church doors smite 
their breasts and dare not lift up so much as their eyes 
unto heaven, of whom Jesus said — They are justified. 
These are the little ones of whom it was said - — It is 
your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 
These are the last who shall be first. These are they 
of whom this world is not worthy. And they are a 
mighty multitude whom no man can number. They can- 
not always bear examination as to the great doctrines of 
the law or of the gospel. They cannot say yea or nay 
to the pretensions of an overbearing church of which 
they may or may not be members, whether pagan, 
Mohammedan, Buddhist, Roman, or presbyterian. To 
them the earth beneath is God's earth, the sky above 
is God's sky, the stars are eyes of angels, the sun's up- 
rising is God's outshine, the flowers are his fancy-work, 
the mountains his masonry. The heavens declare his 



164 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

glory, the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day 
unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth 
knowledge. 

Of this great class, then, in all ages and among all 
races, I would say, they are the un shaped, unhewn 
stones of Christ's temple. They are the uneducated 
members of Christ's Church. They are neither 
sphered, self-centred, nor selfish. They are not shaped 
and fitted to base or narrow uses and the special needs 
of men ; nor yet have they taken the graceful forms 
which belong to the saints. They are the " other 
sheep " of whom Christ spoke. They may not yet be 
gathered into this or that fold. They are the ones of 
whom Jesus said — Many shall come from the east and 
west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. They are the sons 
whom God has foreknown and has predestinated to be 
conformed to the image of his Son. 

As a householder making a feast invites whom he 
will and no wrong is done to them who are not invited, 
-r— may he not do what he will with his own ? — as a 
crown prince may make a progress through all lands 
to find the woman of his choice, and, espousing her, 
wrongs none of them whom he does not choose : — so 
many are called and but few chosen. The hospitality 
of God is sovereign. The Bride, the Lamb's wife, is 



THE GLORIOUS APPEARING. 1 65 

not forced upon him for reasons of state nor by opera- 
tion of laws, agreements, or stipulations. He hath 
loved her. He hath given himself for her. He hath 
died to redeem her, and she maketh herself ready. To 
her it is granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and 
white, which is the righteousness of saints ; and blessed 
are all they which are called as guests merely to the 
supper — the marriage-supper of the Lamb. 

When at last Christ and his Church are thus united 
and in perfect and enduring accord, then shall come 
to pass the glorious appearing of our great God and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, with ten thousand of his saints, to 
execute judgment upon all and to convince the un- 
godly of all their ungodly deeds. 

The saints shall judge the world. For' the Lord 
Jesus Christ shall come with all his saints. They shall 
live. They cannot die any more. Over them the 
second death hath no power. They shall be priests 
of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thou- 
sand years ; and when the thousand years are ended 
of this glorious reign of Christ and his Church there 
shall be a conflict, short, sharp, decisive. Satan, long 
ago cast out of heaven to be ever since the prince of 
this world, with his angels on the one side ; and Jesus 
Christ the son of God a,nd his compacted Church on 
the other side. And unto principalities and powers 



1 66 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 

in heavenly places shall be known by the Church the 
manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal pur- 
pose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
Satan with his angels shall be overthrown. The great 
multitude of them that are carried captive by him, shall 
be rescued and redeemed ; and when Christ and his 
Church have done their work, then for the first time 
it will be fully known who are the saved and who the 
lost. 



Brethren and citizens all! A place and a part in this 
glorious Church of Christ is not for me to promise. 
It is for God to give. It is for us to be willing to re- 
ceive, to wait for, and wish for, and humbly ask for, a 
place in that Church. Even me. And it may be 
the Spirit will certify you that you are chosen. If so, 
rejoice with trembling. 

But if we may not be members of that mystic body, 
the Church of Christ, let us ask for at least a place 
among the guests at the marriage-supper ! If we may 
not be among the saints that reign, let us pray to be 
found among the subjects of that blessed kingdom. 
If we be not chosen priests, let us ask to be wor- 
shipers. If we sit not among the saints to judge 
the world, let us humbly ask to stand among the 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 167 

ransomed who are by them declared justified and 
saved. 

Saved IN the Church of Christ or saved BY the 
Church — God grant that we all may find ourselves, 
at the day of consummation. 

DOXOLOGY. 

"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abun- 
" dantly above all that we ask or think , .... unto 
" hint be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus through- 
" out all ages, world without end." 

Amen. 



Cambridge : Printed by V/elch, Bigelcw, and Company. 



